A $10.1 million jury verdict for a woman who suffered through prolonged delays in the treatment of a spinal cord hemorrhage that left her a paraplegic was featured in Texas Lawyer.  

Attorney Michael Lyons of the trial firm Lyons & Simmons told the legal magazine that his client, Judy “Jessie” Adams suffered an accidentally nicked blood vessel during what should have been a routine steroid injection at her pain management physician’s office. What followed was a series of “unconscionable delays” in transporting her to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital-Flower Mound, completing a diagnostic MRI, and finally in performing emergency surgery.  

“Hospital policy dictates that patients scheduled for an emergency procedure, it is to start within one hour.  … Giving the hospital reasonable benefit of doubt of how long it should take, we told the jury there was approximately three hours and 15 minutes of unreasonable delay,” according to Lyons. 

“Testimony in this case uniformly was this was just an ordinary day, they weren’t busy. During the course of the case, we proved to the jury there were 26 separate examples of written policies of the hospital that were not followed.” 

You can read the full story, “’I Used the Sesame Street Line’: The Winning Strategy Behind a $10 Million Texas Verdict,” here.