$6.4 million awarded for girl’s birth injury

An Independence County jury has awarded $ 6.4 million in damages to an 8- year- old Batesville girl who was born blind and brain- damaged, injuries the girl’s lawyers blamed on mistakes by the doctor and nurse who delivered her at White River Medical Center in Batesville.

The jury found Wednesday that both Dr. Renee Montgomery and nurse Paula Weaver were deficient in the delivery of Cesilia Gabriela Graciano in May 2005, court records show. The money will go into a bank- managed trust fund to pay for the care the girl will need for the rest of her life, Cesilia’s attorney, Gary Green, said in a statement.

“We started with a righteous case and a deserving client and asked for what we thought the value was, $40 million,” Green said, describing the Graciano family as the “poster child for the model American family.” “The facts involved a preventable prolonged birth injury; it was defended as a precipitous event for which there was no warning.”

According to the lawsuit, Cesilia’s mother, Maria Graciano had been pregnant for 39 weeks, almost 10 months, when doctors induced labor. After 21 hours of labor, the unborn child’s heart rate dropped below the base-line heart rate for almost 30 minutes.

The plaintiffs argued that Montgomery did not react appropriately to the resulting symptoms of fetal distress, despite warnings from Weaver.