Parents of Paralyzed Boy Settle Suit for $4.7 Million

An Altadena couple who alleged their 2-year-old son was paralyzed from the neck down at birth by the improper use of forceps and inadequate follow-up care have agreed to a $4.75-million damage settlement, participants in the case said Thursday.

Donna and Andreas Buchholz were seeking $10 million in damages from Glendale Adventist Medical Center, where their son Marc was born, and from five physicians who provided care during and after his birth. But as the two-month trial wound down in Glendale Superior Court late last week, the couple reached settlements with the hospital and four of the physicians.

The combined settlement figure was announced after jurors found Wednesday that the fifth physician, who has since died, had no liability, ending the trial.

“I look at it as though we won,” Donna Buchholz said Thursday. “It was an adequate figure to take care of Marc. But no amount of money is ever going to repay what happened to Marc.”

During the trial the Buchholzes’ lawyers argued that Marc’s spinal cord was injured when obstetrician Juan Drachenberg used steel forceps to rotate the baby’s head and pull him out of the birth canal during delivery. They said Drachenberg should have performed a Cesarean section instead.

The Buchholzes’ attorneys also alleged that the physicians who cared for Marc afterward--Khin S. Lay, John Mapp, Mona Chung and the late Lawrence Fishman--made the injury worse by failing to stabilize Marc’s head and neck after the delivery and not immediately diagnosing a spinal injury.

But the attorneys for the hospital and the physicians argued that the spinal cord injury occurred before Marc was born.

In addition, James D. Nichols, the attorney for Fishman’s estate, asserted that Fishman was not liable because he did not examine Marc until eight days after the birth, when the damage was already done.

Nichols was the only attorney who declined to settle, and on Wednesday the jurors voted 9 to 3 that Fishman was not liable.

All of the other attorneys said Thursday that they were reluctant to gamble on a jury decision.

Carl A. Mc Mahan, who represented the Buchholzes, said he was worried that the family would not be able to pay for Marc’s 24-hour nursing care and breathing machines if the hospital and the physicians were found to have no liability. Donna Buchholz said the family has almost exhausted the $1 million allocated by its private health insurance.

“You simply never know what a jury is going to do,” Mc Mahan said. “And if for some reason the jury came back against us as to these defendants, it would have been a death sentence for Marc Buchholz.”

At the same time, the defense attorneys were concerned that jurors might sympathize with the family and hand down a large award. “There was a good chance we would win the case,” said Dennis J. Sinclitico, attorney for the hospital. “But if we lost the case, we would potentially be subject to damages in the hundreds of millions of dollars.”

Michael A. Zuk, who represented obstetrician Drachenberg, added that even though he considered the hospital’s defense strong legally, “you simply cannot separate the very big risk of a sympathetic verdict for very nice parents and a very charming, horrendously injured child.”

To breathe, Marc requires a ventilator that pumps air into his trachea. A nurse must be nearby around the clock in case the tube comes out. If it is not reinserted quickly, the family said, he could suffocate.

Despite his physical limitations, Marc apparently suffered no brain damage, his family said. He talks, counts to 13 and enjoys watching “Sesame Street.”

Times staff writer Amy Louise Kazmin contributed to this story.