A Philadelphia jury has awarded $108.6 million against Jefferson Health and an affiliated pediatric practice after a forceps-assisted delivery in December 2018 left a newborn with permanent brain damage. The verdict, returned March 20, 2026, is the largest medical malpractice award in the city since a $183 million verdict against Penn Medicine three years ago in a nearly identical category of case.
The child, identified only as KJ in court filings, is now 7½ years old. According to his attorneys, he will live his entire life with the cognitive function of a toddler.
What Happened During the Delivery
KJ was born at what is now called Jefferson Einstein Philadelphia Hospital in December 2018, three years before Jefferson Health acquired Einstein Healthcare Network. His delivery required the use of forceps, a tool used in certain difficult births to guide the baby through the birth canal.
Forceps deliveries carry a rare but serious risk: bleeding inside the baby's skull. That is what happened to KJ. According to the lawsuit, filed in July 2024, he suffered permanent neurologic injury as a result.
Einstein Pediatrics doctors were found liable for the brain injuries by the jury.
The Attorneys' Case
The case was tried by E. Merritt Lentz and Briggs Bedigian of Gilman and Bedigian LLC, the same Philadelphia firm that won the $183 million Penn Medicine verdict in 2023.
Lentz described KJ's prognosis in stark terms after the verdict.
"He will grow up, he will grow into adolescence, he will grow into a young man, he will grow into an adult, but he will retain the brain of essentially a toddler," Lentz said.
That outcome is reflected in how the jury structured its award. Of the $108.6 million total, $106.1 million covers future medical and other expenses projected over an expected additional lifespan of 68 years. The remaining amounts cover pain and suffering ($1.4 million) and loss of earnings capacity ($1 million).
The future expense payments will be made quarterly and include the option for specialized care at an institution for people with brain injuries.
Jefferson's Response and the Road to Appeal
Jefferson Health disputed the verdict immediately and announced plans to appeal.
In a statement, the health system said the jury was not permitted to hear crucial evidence showing its clinicians provided exceptional care, and that liability was based on theories not supported by the medical record. Jefferson characterized the jury's picture of the medical facts as misleading.
That position faces a difficult precedent. When Penn Medicine appealed its own $183 million Philadelphia birth injury verdict, the Pennsylvania Superior Court upheld it last year. By the time that appeal concluded, delay damages had grown the total judgment to $207 million.
Jefferson's appeal, if pursued, carries the same risk of a larger final judgment.
Philadelphia's Nuclear Verdict Reputation
Philadelphia juries are well known within the legal industry for returning what are called nuclear verdicts, awards so large they reshape how defendants and insurers calculate risk. Though most medical malpractice trials end in favor of healthcare providers, the possibility of a nine-figure award has become a significant concern for hospital systems with large labor and delivery operations.
The Jefferson verdict is the second time in three years that a Philadelphia birth injury case has produced a verdict above $100 million. Both cases were handled by Gilman and Bedigian. Both involved allegations of care failures during delivery. And in both cases, the defendants announced their intention to appeal.
For plaintiff attorneys, the pattern is significant. It signals that Philadelphia juries are willing to hold large health systems accountable for birth injury outcomes at a level that matches the lifetime cost of catastrophic neurological damage.
What Plaintiff Attorneys Should Know
Birth injury cases involving forceps and intracranial hemorrhage require expert testimony on obstetric standards, neonatal neurology, and long-term care projections. The structure of this verdict, with the overwhelming majority of damages allocated to future medical expenses rather than pain and suffering, reflects a litigation strategy built around lifetime cost-of-care modeling.
Plaintiff attorneys handling similar birth injury cases can track how comparable verdicts are being tried and won across the country at Major Verdict. Lawyers who have secured results like this one can add their verdicts to the platform, building a public record of their trial outcomes that clients and referring attorneys can find.
For Pennsylvania residents researching birth injury cases or medical malpractice outcomes, Major Verdict's Pennsylvania personal injury resources page is a starting point for understanding what cases like these have produced at verdict.
