County committee approves $14 million malpractice settlement with brain-damaged girl’s family

The Finance Committee of the Cook County Board of Commissioners Wednesday approved a $14 million settlement with the family of girl who suffered severe brain damage due to the care her mother received while in labor at Stroger Hospital.

Though Nicole Moore showed almost all the “cardinal signs and symptoms” of her placenta prematurely separating from the uterine wall while she was in labor with her daughter in 2005, nurses and attending residents didn’t respond in a timely fashion to mitigate the pain she was in or the abnormal heart rate of her baby — Jariah Richardson — the guardian and family’s attorney, Matt Patterson, said.

That lack of a timely response led to that placental abruption, which caused oxygen loss for Jariah, now 14, and severe brain damage that she still lives with today, Patterson said.

“The whole purpose of the suit was to provide for financial compensation to care for her in the future,” Patterson said. “The settlement will help provide for those needs for the rest of her life and she’ll live a long and happy life we hope.”

The county committee Wednesday also approved a $5 million settlement for the family of Sergiy Prodanchuk who died at Stroger Hospital in the fall of 2015 after he had benign tumors removed by his right carotid artery.

In May of that year, Prodanchuk exhibited “cardiac issues” when he had benign tumors removed near that artery on his left side, family lawyer Sal Indomenico said.

Doctors recommended he get a cardiac catheterization, but that procedure never happened, according to Indomenico.

An echocardiogram done before the September procedure came back normal and doctors thought Prodanchuk would be “low risk for cardiac complications from surgery” and he was allowed to proceed with the procedure, according to court filings.

Afterward, Prodanchuk began experiencing difficulty breathing, his blood pressure went up and down rapidly and he “went downhill quickly,” dying three days after the surgery, Indomenico said.

The settlement will help the family financially, but there’s been “a lot of emotional damage done to the family as a result of the sudden loss of the dad,” Indomenico said.

The two settlements will come before the full Board of Commissioners for approval at their Thursday meeting.