Family says UCSF tore child’s heart, seeks $23 million
San Francisco Superior Court officials set a trial date for a legal case in which the mother of a 6-year-old boy charged that UCSF medical staff tore a hole in her son’s heart — leaving him permanently brain-damaged and in need of 24-hour care.
The boy, Damon Davila, was 13 months old when he was taken into treatment at UCSF for what his mother, Kim Melville, 44, thought was a cold but was in fact a lung infection that rapidly worsened, Melville said.
UCSF medical staff placed a thin tube, called a cannula, to allow his lungs to rest, according to the trial brief shared by Damon’s lawyer, Moseley Collins.
Damon’s family, which lives in Santa Rosa, charges that the medical team’s failure to properly secure the cannula during a procedure caused it to pierce Damon’s heart, which led to a cardiac arrest and a code blue — a life-threatening event requiring resuscitation — for 57 minutes.
The result was a catastrophic brain injury that has left Damon with permanent brain, heart and lung damage, as well as quadriparetic cerebral palsy, according to the brief.
“He’ll never walk, he’ll never speak, he’ll never feed himself,” Collins said. “When he’s 25 years old, he’ll be lying on a bed with a diaper on.”
Kristen Bole, executive director of public affairs at UCSF, declined to comment on the case because it is in active litigation.
The trial is expected to begin on Sept. 19. Damon’s family is seeking economic damages of more than $23 million from the regents of the University of California, which operates UCSF Medical Center.
“I’m nervous,” Melville said, referring to the trial. “It just seems like no one’s wanting to take responsibility for what happened.”
The goal of the lawsuit is to obtain the funds necessary to take care of Damon, and to hold the medical institution accountable, Collins said.
“We’re not asking for people to be fired — in fact, some of these providers are good providers,” Collins said. But you have to take accountability for when things go wrong.”