$42.9 Million for ‘Wrongful Birth’

A jury ruled that health care giant Columbia/HCA must pay a couple $42.9 million for refusing their request that their brain-damaged and premature baby--now 7 years old--not be kept on life support. J. Mark Miller and Karla H. Miller had sued Woman’s Hospital of Texas and Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp. for negligence in a rare “wrongful birth” case. Their daughter, born in 1990 after about 22 weeks of pregnancy, weighed 1.5 pounds at birth. She is brain-damaged, blind and almost totally incapacitated. “We got the opportunity to tell our story and these people understood--these jurors have done everything they could do,” Mark Miller said. Columbia stood by its decision to save the life of the baby.