Blind Girl Wins $4 Million in Suit Against Hospital

A 10-year-old girl who became blind while undergoing treatment at Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles has been awarded $4 million by a Superior Court jury.

Valerie Castro, the daughter of an oil field worker in Ventura County, will need special education and care for the rest of her life, according to her attorneys, who alleged that the child was negligently treated at the hospital in 1983.

“I’m glad this is over, but if Valerie had vision, that’s what we’d want,” Lorrain Castro, Valerie’s mother, said Thursday outside the Los Angeles County Courthouse, as her daughter stood shyly beside her. “It’s been a nine-year nightmare.”

The incident that led to Valerie’s condition began when she was undergoing surgery in 1983 at Westlake Community Hospital in Westlake Village, and had problem with the anesthesia, according to Bruce Bunch, one of two attorneys representing her. Then 21 months old, she was transferred to pediatric intensive care at Childrens Hospital in Los Angeles.

Bunch contended that the hospital did not start treatment quickly enough when the child’s brain began to swell. “When they finally noted it, it was too late to save her sight,” he said.

The suit was filed against the hospital and Dr. Antonio Galvis, who was the attending intensive care physician. “We wanted an economic award that would protect Valerie the rest of her life,” said co-counsel John Contos. Her father, Anthony, and mother, who works as a school crossing guard, have five other children. “It’s impossible for them to provide the care she needs.”

Bunch said Valerie’s condition is complicated by a neurological problem, so that “she cannot learn Braille. She’s going to need someone to take care of her. She’s never going to work.”

Pamela Benben, attorney for Childrens Hospital and Galvis, said doctors had provided excellent care and called the jury’s verdict “an unfortunate miscarriage of justice. The verdict is unsupported by any objective medical fact. You never know how the sympathy factor is going to come into play and outweigh objective medical facts.”

The jury, which delivered its verdict late Thursday after an eight-week trial, determined that the cost of Valerie’s medical and custodial care over her lifetime, plus potential lost earnings, will total $27 million.

Barring an appeal by Childrens Hospital, Benben said the hospital will opt to pay the award in a lump sum of $4 million, which, when invested, will yield the equivalent of $27 million over the child’s lifetime.