Maya Kowalski sobbed heavily as a jury decided she had won her $220 million medical malpractice case on Thursday.
A Florida jury found Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital guilty of all charges in the case, which was featured in the Netflix documentary “Take Care of Maya.”
Now, 17, Kowalski gripped a cross and was overcome with emotion as the stunning verdict was announced in a tense St. Petersburg courtroom.
Kowalski’s mother had admitted the then-10-year-old girl to the facility in 2015, telling doctors she was suffering from a chronic pain condition that required risky ketamine treatments.
Skeptical about Beata Kowalski’s demands — and the severity of Maya’s condition — staffers contacted Florida child welfare authorities.
Maya was soon removed from her parents’ care and made an involuntary medical ward of the state.
After being barred from seeing Maya for 85 days and facing child abuse allegations, Beata Kowalski took her own life in the garage of the family home.
5 Maya Kowalski sobbed as the verdict was read. Law&Crime Network
5 Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital was found guilty of all charges in the case. Google Map
Contending that the hospital wrongfully committed Maya and cruelly separated her from her mother, the Kowalski family sued the facility for $220 million.
Kowalski and her brother exploded into heaving sobs midway through the reading of the verdict, as the clerk referred to Beata’s Kowalski’s suicide and the hospital’s complicity in her death.
Maya testified at trial she still suffered from the debilitating effects of complex regional pain syndrome, a neurological condition.
The rare ailment can cause intense, widespread pain due to nervous system dysfunction.
5 Maya’s mother, Beata Kowalski, killed herself after being barred from seeing her daughter. Courtesy of Netflix
She told jurors that hospitals staffers were dismissive of her condition and believed her mother was suffering from Munchausen by Proxy syndrome, where caregivers contrive or exaggerate a child’s ailments for attention.
Hospital attorneys argued that staffers took drastic measures because they felt Kowalski’s mother was endangering her with the ketamine treatments, which she had originally begun in Mexico.
“The reason why All Children’s did what it did, the reason why All Children’s tried to comfort Maya, the reason why All Children’s tried to get her on a safe medical path is because the loving and caring providers at my clients’ hospital believed in a better future for her if they could get her off the unnecessary drugs given at dangerous levels,” hospital lawyer Ethen Shapiro said in his closing statement Tuesday
In a draft of a 2015 blog post Beata had composed in her daughter’s voice, she had acknowledged the risks, writing how her previous induced ketamine coma in the Mexican clinic could potentially result in “total body failure/death.”
5 The Kowalski family Courtesy of Netflix
Still writing from Maya’s perspective, she wrote elsewhere that “if I was a horse I would be comatose or dead already” as a result of the severity of the treatments.
But Kowalski’s lawyers cast hospital staff as guilty of being unfeeling and overreaching in separating the young girl from her mother, a measure that ultimately left her without one.
Kowalski cried repeatedly on the stand while recalling her mother’s care, telling jurors she felt lonely and abandoned while a ward of the state.
Defense attorneys sought to shoot down Kowalski’s claims of ongoing suffering from the disease.
Her lawyers said she was unable to attend several days of court due to pain, leading the hospital’s counsel to introduce pictures of her out on the town just days later.
But Kowalski hit back, countering that she was simply attending her graduation in one of the images and was being unfairly smeared.
5 The Kowalskis cried in court as the guilty verdicts were handed down. Law&Crime Network
The jury sided with the teen in totality, finding the renowned hospital guilty of false imprisonment, malpractice and infliction of emotional distress.
The facility is facing tens of millions of dollars in penalties, although it is expected to appeal the verdict.
Attorneys for the hospital ripped the verdict, accusing the court of “clear and prejudicial errors.”
“The evidence clearly showed that Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital followed Florida’s mandatory reporting law in reporting suspected child abuse and, when those suspicions were confirmed by the district court, fully complied with Department of Children and Families (DCF) and court orders,” lawyer Howard Hunter said in a statement. “We are determined to defend the vitally important obligation of mandatory reporters to report suspected child abuse and protect the smallest and most vulnerable among us.”
Jurors find hospital guilty of all charges in $220 million ‘Take Care of Maya’ case
