Medical Error Leads to 11-Year Hospitalization : Florida: Boy, now 12, finally goes home after Legislature appropriates $6 million as malpractice settlement to pay for his special care. Doctors will pay $1.8 million, but the hospital wants the funds.

Justin Bates was just a toddler when his mother rushed him to the hospital with an asthma attack that left him gasping.

A medical error that day in 1985 left Justin blind, paralyzed and unable to speak. For years, red tape over financial compensation snarled the hopes his mother had of bringing him home.

Now almost 12 years old, he’s finally been released.

“Oh, my God,” Cynthia Mendat shrieked with joy last week as attendants lifted her son’s shriveled body, about the size of a 5-year-old, into an ambulance.

“Earlier this year I thought that maybe Justin would never come home,” she said, recalling her long legal battle with Broward General Medical Center in Ft. Lauderdale that ended when the state Legislature approved a $6-million settlement earlier this year.

The ambulance took Justin to a new home bought with part of the legislative settlement. Family members and about two dozen news reporters and television camera crews gathered around the youngster’s new bed as Mendat held one of her son’s clenched hands.

The tiny hand relaxed a little as Mendat cooed and talked softly to her son. Justin’s mouth opened wide as he held his head back, exposing undeveloped teeth. He was smiling, his mother told everyone.

“He hasn’t been this happy and relaxed since I took him to the hospital 11 years ago,” Mendat said later.

The ordeal began Jan. 14, 1985, when his oxygen supply was cut off because of an improperly inserted ventilator tube, causing a collapsed lung, cardiac arrest and brain damage.

Mendat was unable to provide the round-the-clock care Justin needed and the hospital reluctantly allowed him to stay, trying several times to move him out.

A jury awarded the $6 million in 1990, but awards of more than $200,000 against public institutions must be approved by the Legislature. Justin remained at Broward General while its attorneys and lobbyists battled to keep the Legislature from approving the full payment.

Justin has been mired in a routine the last 11 years. He did not leave his bed, except to be bathed, until he got a specially equipped wheelchair last Christmas.

He had schooling two days a week, with someone reading to him or playing music. But most of his day was spent alone, listening to the radio.

“He can’t move anything, even his head, but he’s in that shell that we call a body. He’s definitely in there, a loving little boy,” said his mother, who also has a 2-year-old daughter.

One legislator who fought for the payment, Rep. Ben Graber--who is also a physician--said the hospital had pictured Justin as vegetative.

“When I visited him in the hospital for the first time, I rubbed his head. He smiled. I rubbed his head again. He laughed. Vegetative people don’t laugh,” said Graber, who was at the hospital when Justin was discharged.

“This was a horrible medical tragedy,” said Graber, a gynecologist and obstetrician.

In addition to the $6 million approved by the Legislature, doctors agreed to pay Mendat $1.8 million. But the hospital has put a claim on that money, arguing that is what it is owed for Justin’s years of care.