CALIFORNIA BRIEFING / LOS ANGELES

A jury on Friday awarded $7.4 million to a child who suffered severe brain damage as an infant after doctors at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center failed to promptly treat an infection.

Attorneys for Paris Campen, who was a little more than a month old at the time of the incident, argued that doctors at the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit were negligent when they did not administer an antibiotic to the newborn until eight hours after she began showing symptoms that indicated an infection.

An attorney for Cedars-Sinai did not return a request for comment.

Campen, now 5, eventually developed meningitis, which caused permanent brain damage, attorney Diane Corwin said. The child’s mother, Angelique Campen, said her daughter now has a permanent shunt in her brain to drain excess fluids and needs physical and behavioral therapy.

Angelique Campen, who is an emergency room physician at UCLA Medical Center, said she questioned measures taken by the doctor but was repeatedly ignored.

Corwin tried the case along with attorney John Denove.

-- Victoria Kim