Illinois jury awards $38.4M after medical equipment fails, injures surgical technologist

Summary

• Illinois jury awarded $38.4 million in a product liability verdict against Hillrom Company.
• Surgical technologist Stacey Brown suffered permanent injuries after an operating room boom collapsed.
• Jury awarded $33.8 million in punitive damages tied to alleged knowledge of defective bolts.
• Evidence showed multiple defective booms at St. John’s Hospital in Springfield, Illinois.

Missouri attorneys obtained an eight-figure verdict before an Illinois jury in a product liability and personal injury case involving a medical equipment manufacturer.

The defendant, Hillrom Company, Inc., a division of Baxter Healthcare, produced the defective operating room boom that fell and injured Stacey Brown. Brown and her husband Roger were represented by Amy Collignon Gunn & Erica B. Slater of Gunn Slater in Clayton.

Brown was working as a surgical technologist at HSHS St. John’s Hospital in Springfield, Illinois when the defective boom collapsed on her, according to her attorneys. The incident resulted in permanent injuries to Brown’s dominant right arm that required two shoulder surgeries. Brown also suffered ongoing injuries to her neck, right leg, right foot and right wrist.

Part of the compensation awarded by the jury was punitive; the rest was from “the profound loss of independence and quality of life she has suffered since the accident,” her attorneys said.

The company knew there was an existing mix-up with the bolts manufacturers used to secure the booms that affected its load bearing capabilities, Slater said.

“This product is suspended from the ceiling, is able to be moved by a swing arm in and around the OR and it provides electricity. It holds equipment that the surgeons are using on patients on the operating table, such as cautery equipment. It has medical gasses on it that are flowing to the patient while under anesthesia,” Slater said. “They had knowledge that these bolts were getting mixed up at these load bearing connections and that knowledge came to light to Hillrom in 2018. The issue resurfaced in 2019 and then resurfaced again in 2020, and the policy of the company in relation to this issue became to not take further action because no one had gotten hurt.”

It wasn’t until Brown was injured that the company acted, Slater said.

“This error affected about 3,700 booms and interestingly, once they discovered this issue with the boom at St John’s, Hillrom did inspect all the others — there were 30 additional booms hung at St John’s — and four additional booms had this bolt mix up,” Slater said. “So, five of the 31 that were hanging at St John’s ended up being defective in this way. This is just the first one that fell after years of use; the bolts sheared.”

Overall, the jury awarded Brown and her husband $4.6 million in compensatory damages and $33.8 million in punitive damages.

“Hillrom’s own risk analysis rated the potential harm from a complete boom collapse as ‘catastrophic.’ Hillrom’s representative acknowledged under oath that he could not guarantee another TruPort boom would not fall on another person. The jury heard this testimony and responded accordingly,” Gunn and Slater said in a press release about the verdict.

Attorneys for Hillrom did not respond to a request for comment but the company sent the following statement:

“We strongly disagree with the verdict and many of the statements in the press release issued by the plaintiff’s attorney and intend to vigorously appeal. This case concerns an injury resulting from a product installed in 2013 and was an isolated incident. Patient and caregiver safety is our priority. In line with our robust safety processes, we took immediate action to resolve the issue after learning of the incident involving the plaintiff in January 2022.”

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Amount of verdict, judgment or settlement: $38,400,000

Type of action: Personal injury/product liability

Allocation of Fault: Fault placed on defendant, Hillrom Company, Inc., a division of Baxter Healthcare (Deerfield, IL).

Breakdown:

• Punitive damages of $33,800.000.00.
• Total Compensatory Damages for Plaintiffs Stacey Brown and Roger Brown: $4,600,000.
• Damages for plaintiff Stacey Brown: $3,850,000
• Loss of normal life experienced and reasonably certain to be experienced in the future: $1.000.000.00.
• Pain and suffering experienced and reasonably certain to be experienced in the future as a result of the injuries: $1.000.000.00.
• Emotional distress experienced and reasonably certain to be experienced in the future: $1.000.000.00.
• The value and earnings and benefits lost: $350.000.00.
• The value of the earnings and benefits reasonably certain to be lost in the future: $500,000.00.
• Damages for Roger Brown for the value of the household services of his spouse of which he is reasonably certain to be deprived in the future: $750,000.00.

Venue: State of Illinois, Seventh Judicial Circuit, Sangamon County

Case Number/Date: 2023 -LA-000263 / 05/12/2026

Injuries: Head, brain, neck, shoulder, arm, elbow, wrist and hand.

Caption: Stacey and Roger Brown v. Hillrom Company, Inc.

Plaintiffs’ Attorneys: Amy Collignon Gunn & Erica B. Slater of Gunn Slater in Clayton.

Defendants’ Attorneys: Christopher Cashen of Dinsmore in Lexington Kentucky & Benjamin Harner of Thompson Coburn in St. Louis.