Kenneth Watkins and Sara Mićković Secure $14.2 Million Jury Verdict in Oakland County Stroke Misdiagnosis Lawsuit
On October 12, 2026, an Oakland County jury returned a verdict of approximately $14.2 million to Brittani Jeffries, a Novi mother of three who was left disabled after a hospital failed to recognize that she was having a stroke. Sommers Schwartz senior shareholder Kenneth Watkins and associate Sara Mićković tried the case, securing more than $4.2 million in non-economic damages and approximately $10 million in economic damages for the plaintiff.
A Serious Injury That Could Have Been Avoided
On November 19, 2020, the plaintiff was 32 years old, married to her high school sweetheart, and raising three young children. Around 3:30 p.m., her husband came home and found her on the floor. She could not speak or stand, her eyes were open, and she was gripping her right arm. An ambulance took her to the emergency department at Ascension Providence Hospital Novi, where she arrived at 4:39 p.m.
Triage staff documented that the plaintiff was lethargic, disoriented, unable to follow commands, and unable to give a medical history. She could not walk or stand at this time either. The emergency room physician, defendant Dr. Nicholas Dyc, noted that she was nonverbal and not following commands. The care team initially suspected a drug overdose and later settled on a urinary tract infection (UTI) as the explanation, even though the urine test showed only a weak positive result in an otherwise healthy 32-year-old. No one consulted a neurologist, and no one ordered the more detailed imaging that would have shown a blocked blood vessel in her brain.
The plaintiff was admitted to the hospital, where the problem worsened. Late that evening, Defendant physician assistant, Jeffry Belan, PA-C, ordered nurses to perform neurological checks every four hours, which are simple bedside tests of grip, speech, and the ability to follow commands. Those were never performed, not by PA Belan or anyone else. Brittani remained unable to speak and unable to respond to verbal stimuli. She still could not walk. At 9:33 a.m., hospital staff finally performed a neurological check and found right-sided weakness and slurred speech. A stroke code was called at about 10:40 a.m., more than 16 hours after she arrived at the hospital.
Every Hour of Delay Mattered
Stroke treatment is a race against the clock. A clot-dissolving drug called tissue plasminogen activator (t-PA) can be administered only within a few hours of when a patient was last known to be well, and a thrombectomy, the procedure that physically removes the clot, works best the sooner it is done. By the time the hospital recognized the plaintiff’s stroke, she was far outside the window for t-PA and well into a very late window for a thrombectomy. The thrombectomy was performed more than 20 hours after she was last seen well. Bleeding developed in her brain, and surgeons had to remove part of her skull to relieve the pressure. She needed a second thrombectomy, time on a ventilator, and a stay in the hospital until December 11, 2020, followed by months in a rehabilitation facility.
Now 37, the plaintiff lives with permanent physical and cognitive impairments. Her speech is so severely impaired that defense counsel could not cross-examine her during trial. She cannot work, and she cannot care for her children without significant support. A life care planner outlined the cost of the care she will need for the rest of her life.
Medical Malpractice in the ER and Beyond
This was not a one-mistake case. The malpractice spanned an emergency room and an inpatient unit. It involved multiple shifts, an ER doctor, a physician assistant, an internist, and several nurses, with many individuals and the hospital named as defendants. The medical record tells the story of how they failed the patient and violated the standard of care.
Ken and Sara had to take the patient’s scattered chart and turn it into a story a jury could follow: a young woman who could not speak, a hospital that kept finding other explanations, and a series of ordered checks and available tests that were never performed. They supported that story with testimony from experts in emergency medicine, neurology, neuroradiology, and life care planning, and they confronted the care team’s own accounts of what they saw and what they did.
“Brittani was an otherwise healthy 32-year-old woman in distress who could not say a word, and she was treated for a UTI,” Ken said. “Anyone who handles medical malpractice cases in Oakland County knows how hard it is to win a jury verdict against a healthcare provider here. Local juries are slow to second-guess doctors, and the defense bar knows it. We knew every line of the chart and every witness had to hold up. And the jury listened.”
