Sommers Schwartz attorneys Kenneth Watkins and Sara Mićković secured a $14.2 million jury verdict to a 32-year-old woman whose stroke went undiagnosed for about 20 hours at a Metro Detroit hospital. The Oakland County jury awarded more than $4 million in non-economic damages and approximately $10 million in economic damages for her claims of emergency room malpractice.

The plaintiff had a history of high blood pressure and a past aortic dissection (a tear in the body’s main artery) repaired with a stent. On November 19, 2020, she sounded normal on a call with her husband around 3:30 p.m., who later found her on the floor, unable to speak, unable to stand, and gripping her right arm. She arrived at the hospital’s emergency department at 4:39 p.m., confused, disoriented, and unable to follow commands.

Although she was nonverbal and exhibiting none of the ordinary symptoms of a drug overdose, her emergency room physician suspected such, ordered a head CT scan without contrast dye and lab tests, and began treating her for an overdose. When the tests instead showed a urinary tract infection, the team blamed her condition on the infection and failed to appreciate the then obvious signs of a stroke. She was admitted with orders for neurological checks every four hours, but according to the lawsuit, no neurological assessments were performed in the ER or after admission.

Early the next morning, nurses documented confusion, drowsiness, weakness, and her inability to speak. At 10:15 a.m., a doctor found her with slurred speech and paralyzed on her right side, and a stroke alert was finally called at 10:40 a.m., roughly 17 hours after she arrived. Imaging confirmed a stroke caused by a blocked artery in the brain. By then, she was in a late window to perform medical interventions to break up the stroke.

The plaintiff underwent a mechanical thrombectomy, a procedure to physically remove the clot, but her condition kept worsening. Bleeding and swelling developed in her brain, and surgeons removed part of her skull to relieve the pressure. She had a second thrombectomy, needed a ventilator, a tracheostomy, and a feeding tube, and then spent three months at a rehabilitation facility. Ninety days after the stroke, her disability was rated as moderately severe: she could not walk or attend to her bodily functions without another person’s help.

The case centered on the claim that a young patient who suddenly lost the ability to walk and speak should have been evaluated for stroke immediately, not treated for an overdose or an infection. The lawsuit alleged that the care team should have performed a full neurological exam, appreciated her stroke symptoms, called in a neurologist, ordered a CT scan with contrast dye (which shows blood vessels), and performed the thrombectomy sooner that night. The lawsuit contended that with timely diagnosis and treatment, she more likely than not would have had a better outcome and been able to live independently.