New Mexico Couple Wins $74M for Baby’s Brain Damage in Delivery

A jury has awarded a New Mexico couple $74 million in a medical malpractice lawsuit involving a son left with brain damage.

The jury in late August ruled that a women’s health clinic in Hobbs, New Mexico, didn’t properly follow Lorenza Botello’s pregnancy and a doctor injured her baby during delivery.

According to the lawsuit, medical professionals from the Franklin, Tennessee-based Community Health Systems failed to monitor the baby’s growth, who weighed 111/2 pounds at birth.

Botello’s attorney, Kent Buckingham says a doctor forced a vaginal birth despite the mother’s plea for a cesarean section in 2012.

Buckingham says, the baby, Jonathon, suffered nerve and brain damage.

An attorney for Community Health Systems declined to comment.