An $8 million verdict awarded in Rome this month to a couple whose baby was stillborn is the largest award of its kind in Georgia, the couple’s attorneys say.
A federal jury found midwife Valerie Smith and her employer, Harbin Clinic, liable in relation to the care they provided to Becky Wise in 2018 when she was admitted at Cartersville Medical Center while 39 weeks pregnant with her first child.
Wise, who was 29 at the time, was having contractions and reported to nurses that her baby, Lily Wise, was not moving as much as before the contractions started, court records show. Medical tests showed the baby was healthy when Wise arrived at the medical center, but hours later, the baby’s heart had stopped beating and she was delivered stillborn by cesarean section.
“Our hope is that this case is a turning point for mothers, babies and families to receive the medical care they need and deserve,” said attorney Nelson Tyrone, who represented parents Becky and Jay Wise in the case. “Institutions must be held accountable when they do not meet the standards of care and make critical mistakes that put their patients’ lives at risk.”
Smith and Harbin Clinic denied allegations of wrongdoing in the case. In a statement provided to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Tuesday, Harbin Clinic said it is committed to providing high quality health care for every patient and stands behind its medical providers.
“Our heart goes out to the family for their heartbreaking loss,” the clinic said.
Tyrone said Smith and other medical staff treating Becky Wise noticed shortly after her arrival at the hospital that the baby wasn’t getting enough oxygen and ordered more tests. He said Smith never looked at the test results before leaving the hospital before the baby died, having been told a “score” from the results that didn’t show the extent of the problem.
“The other part of the picture was really concerning,” he said.
Tyrone said Becky and Jay Wise weren’t told there was a problem until nurses and another midwife performed an ultrasound to see if the baby was alive, because they’d lost the baby’s heart rate on monitoring devices.
He said evidence in the case showed the hospital was particularly busy when Becky Wise was there during a holiday weekend, nurses weren’t paying enough attention, a supervising doctor was off-site with other patients and Smith expected to get off work at a certain time. He said Smith left the hospital at a critical time for Lily Wise, when the last test results had come back.
“We felt like everyone was over-scheduled and that the midwife, who was in the best position to recognize the trouble that Lily was in, really expected to be done for the day,” Tyrone said. “She learned of the test results and left the hospital without ever speaking to mom (Becky Wise), looking at the actual results themselves or looking at the baby’s monitoring.”
Tyrone said Lily Wise would be alive if medical staff had made the decision to deliver her via cesarean section in response to signs over six hours that she was deprived of oxygen and her condition was deteriorating.
“The jury’s verdict speaks to the fact that the maternal care system continues to fail Americans and is in vital need of change,” he said.
The couple alleged all the medical professionals who provided care to Becky Wise while she was in labor were negligent and caused her baby’s death from a lack of oxygen. In addition to Smith and Harbin Clinic, the couple initially sued the doctor who delivered their stillborn baby, Steven Spivey, as well as another midwife, Rebecca Evans, and the health clinic Cartersville Ob/Gyn Associates.
“In fact, had any of them done their jobs Lily would be alive today,” the couple said in a pretrial case filing. “She would be six and a half years old.”
Becky and Jay Wise dropped their claims against Evans and the Cartersville health clinic in February 2021 and dismissed Spivey from the case in November 2023, leaving just Smith and Harbin Clinic as the defendants at the six-day trial.
Tyrone said the claims against Evans, Cartersville Ob/Gyn Associates and Spivey were resolved before trial, but that Smith and Harbin Clinic rejected an offer earlier in the litigation to settle the claims against them for $500,000. He said the trial was devastatingly retraumatizing for Becky and Jay Wise, who have moved from Cartersville to South Carolina since losing their daughter.
“If I could have obtained a settlement for them pretrial, I would have preferred that for them,” Tyrone said Tuesday. “The primary feeling they had was relief that it was over. They felt heard by the jury. They felt that Lily’s story was told. And they felt that the jury’s verdict indicated that they understood how valuable Lily’s life was.”
No other fetal death case in Georgia has awarded as much as $8 million for the value of the baby’s life, the Wises’ attorneys said.
In their March 4 verdict, the jurors found Smith and Harbin Clinic 40% responsible for the baby’s death. They allocated 60% of the blame to Cartersville Medical Center and its nurses, which were not parties in the case.
Tyrone said Smith and Harbin Clinic are on the hook for the full verdict as the only defendants in the case and that he will be seeking more than $1 million from them in additional costs, including attorney fees and interest tied to their rejection of the settlement offer.
About the Author
Keep Reading
The Latest
Featured
