Over $200M verdict overturned in 'Maya' hospitalization case chronicled in Netflix documentary
A trial judge made errors requiring a new trial in a case stemming from a woman’s suicide after her 10-year-old daughter was removed from her care and held at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida, a Florida appeals court ruled last week.
The Second District Court of Appeal of Florida reversed a judgment of more than $200 million in favor of the woman’s family, including daughter Maya Kowalski, after a 2023 trial seeking to hold Johns Hopkins accountable, report the Tampa Bay Times and the Insurance Journal. The case was made famous in a 2023 Netflix documentary, Take Care of Maya.
The hospital was accused of falsely imprisoning and battering the girl and inflicting emotional distress on the family, leading to the mother’s January 2017 suicide, according to a previous story by the Tampa Bay Times. That story reported that the trial judge reduced the jurors’ initial verdict by $47.5 million, bringing the total to $213.5 million. Later reporting by the newspaper said the reduced award was $208 million.
The trial judge’s error interpreting the immunity statute for reporters of suspected child abuse “pervades not only the court’s evidentiary rulings but the trial itself,” the appeals court said. As a result, a new trial is necessary on one claim of emotional distress, false imprisonment, battery and medical negligence, the appeals court said.
The trial judge should have issued a directed verdict for the hospital on several other claims and should not have submitted a punitive damages claim to the jury, the appeals court said.
Maya Kowalski was reporting excruciating pain when she was brought to the emergency room in October 2016, according to the Oct. 29 opinion by Judge Anthony K. Black. Her mother, Beata Kowalski, demanded ketamine infusions, a drug that the girl had been receiving while under the care of another doctor following her diagnosis of complex regional pain syndrome, which causes severe pain with no apparent cause.
Concerned about the demand for ketamine and a medical history inconsistent with the hospital’s observations, a social worker reported possible abuse to the Department of Children and Families.
Maya Kowalski remained at the hospital while the department filed an abuse petition, leading to placement in shelter care at the hospital. Maya Kowalski was held there for 97 days, 91 of which were the result of dependency court orders. Beata Kowalski was ordered to have no contact with her daughter, although supervised phone calls were later allowed.
At the hospital, Maya Kowalski was weaned off ketamine.
Maya Kowalski testified that she was not told that physicians thought that she had conversion disorder or Munchausen syndrome. Once, a nurse yelled at her for not moving during a bed change, despite not being able to walk, stand or roll. According to Maya Kowalski, the nurse yelled, “I know you can move. I know you’re faking it. Just stand up. We all know.”
Another time, Maya Kowalski testified, she was forced to strip naked for photographs before a dependency court hearing. She was wearing a training bra and shorts in the photographs.
Maya Kowalski’s father testified that the hospital’s licensed clinical social worker asked him at one time whether he had ever considered divorcing his wife. He also said Maya Kowalski reported that the social worker told her that she could be Maya Kowalski’s mother in the hospital. He also learned many years later that Maya Kowalski’s hospital room was under video surveillance.
A licensed clinical social worker testified that the request for photographs was made by an attending physician. An email addressed concerns that Maya Kowalski was self-mutilating, and there were scratches on her body.
The social worker testified that Maya Kowalski would report extraordinary pain only if prompted by her mother or if someone asked whether she was in pain. She said the hospital noted several times in which the girl was moving her hands and legs without pain. She played foosball, made crafts and played the piano downstairs.
But Maya Kowalski testified that she was in worse condition when she left the hospital than when she entered. One week after her mother’s suicide, Maya Kowalski was allowed to return home with her family. She was still in significant pain and unable to walk.
Maya Kowalski also testified that she had no flare-ups of her condition in the three years following her January 2017 discharge. At the time of the trial, she had been able to walk, run and ice skate.
According to the appeals court, the trial judge failed to consider the entirety of the Florida law providing immunity to child-abuse reporters and wrongly allowed a jury to hear “significant and inflammatory testimony” about restrictions put in place by the dependency court and their impact on the woman’s family.
The trial court found that the hospital had reasonable cause to report suspected abuse but “said nothing of immunity” for good faith implementation of dependency court orders, the appeals court said.
The hospital isn’t liable for some actions related to Maya Kowalski’s claim of intentional infliction for emotional distress because of hospital-entitled immunity, according to a concurrence by Judge Andrea Teves Smith. But substantial evidence supports a claim that other actions constituted outrageous conduct by the hospital, supporting the emotional distress claim.
A case was made that the hospital social worker “took advantage of Maya’s circumstances and her vulnerable state,” the concurrence said.
The social worker “lied to Maya that Maya’s mother was getting mental health treatment, telling Maya that she may have to go into medical foster care and that [the social worker] could be her mother while she was in foster care,” the concurrence said. “She further lied to Maya and used things that Maya enjoyed to encourage Maya to do better at physical therapy, but instead of rewarding her she would stomp and leave the room saying that Maya did not do well enough.
“Maya also established at trial, through her own testimony, that the nurses spoke loud enough for Maya to overhear that they believed that her mom was causing her symptoms. Maya testified that the nurses berated her and accused her of faking her ailments. She stated that a bedside toilet was placed far from her bed so that she could not reach it without walking—which she could not do. Maya would call for help to go to the bathroom, but no one would come in and take her, so she was forced to wet or soil herself in bed or otherwise fall and injure herself. Maya testified that the statements and actions of the nurses and [the social worker] were done to break her down and prove and/or force her to admit that she was faking her symptoms.”
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