Bronx, NY — Keimoneia Redish, a Black grandmother from New York who was left crippled for life due to medical malpractice, has recently won a massive $110.6 million in damages after a long legal fight against a local hospital and its four doctors. It was considered the largest malpractice award ever for a single-plaintiff suit.
In 2010, Redish was taken to St. Barnabas Hospital after an asthma attack. Instead of getting better, she got worse with a brain injury that resulted in crippling speech and motor deficits, according to her attorney, Richard Gurfein.
According to the lawsuit, she should have been transferred to a hospital with better equipment. The hospital didn’t have the advanced technology, ECMO or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, that could have prevented a lifelong, irreversible damage caused by carbon dioxide build-up in her brain.
Still, Dr. Darryl Adler, Dr. Richard Stumacher, Dr. Abdurham Ahmed, and Dr. Ronald Ciubutaro continued treating Redish at the St. Barnabas facility. She testified that at one point, she was moved to the “dark side” of the hospital’s ICU. She spent a total of 328 days in the hospital and in nursing homes before returning home in October 2011.
Above all that, Redish claims the doctors and the lawyer representing the hospital made her feel that her condition was somehow her fault. She testified, “I heard [the defense lawyer] say I fell using the walker because I always tried to walk. But I fell that day because I refused to be down.”
Redish, who is now 48-years old with five sons and a grandchild, is confined to a wheelchair and being taken care of her partner for 26 years, Clarence Darden.
“I don’t want to be this way,” she added.