$4.75 Million - Justin D. (infant) v. Porto

In the fall of 2003, Anthony T. DiPietro teamed up with David L. Taback, to litigate the case of an infant who sustained hypoxia, a lack of oxygen, to his brain during delivery. As a result of this collaborative effort, a four million seven hundred fifty thousand dollar settlement was procured on behalf of the infant plaintiff and his family.

Justin's mother presented to Brookdale in the afternoon of January 26, 1993 with complaints of contractions. Her water had not yet broke. She was placed on external fetal monitoring at 5 p.m. that evening which immediately revealed suspicious decelerations of the fetal heart rate to 100 beats per minute. Justin's mother was then placed on her left side to attempt intrauterine resuscitation of her baby. Amazingly, the fetal monitoring strip were then turned off until midnight and Justin's mother was instructed to “walk around” the hospital during the interim.

Fetal heart rate monitoring was finally resumed at 3:05 am, and Justin's mother was again immediately placed on her left side and given oxygen. Justin's mother was then finally admitted to labor and deliver at 4 a.m. with a notation of “suspicious tracings” in her chart.

Continued monitoring at 7 a.m. revealed fetal heart rate tachycardia followed by more late decelerations. Once again, the monitoring was inexplicably turned off. Our expert stated that the care and treatment rendered to this mother was "disgusting".

Justin was ultimately born by cesarean section, but not until 4:43 that afternoon. His blood work indicated a significant lack of oxygen in his blood during the labor and delivery period. However, the defendant doctors attempted to use blood work performed well after the delivery as part of their defense that the oxygenation level of the blood was not grossly abnormal at the time of birth.