A jury awarded an additional $50 million to a family that sued a Johns Hopkins children's hospital in a case made famous by a Netflix documentary, bringing the total damages to $261 million, the Tampa Bay Times reported Nov. 10.
The six jurors ruled Nov. 9 that St. Petersburg, Fla.-based Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital must pay the family of 17-year-old Maya Kowalski $211 million in the medical malpractice lawsuit, according to the story. After a second round of deliberations that evening, the jury added the remaining punitive damages on counts of false imprisonment and battery.
In 2016, hospital staff called a child abuse hotline after her mother demanded ketamine to treat Maya for chronic pain, suspecting Munchausen syndrome by proxy. Maya was confined to the hospital for three months, during which time her mother took her own life. The family had previously taken Maya to Mexico for high-dose ketamine treatments.
The case made national headlines after the Netflix documentary "Take Care of Maya" was released in June and watched millions of times.
"To me, it was about the answer, knowing that my mom was right. I want people to know that she wasn't harming me at all," Ms. Kowalski told the media after the ruling. "For the first time, I feel like I got justice."
The hospital's defense team said it plans to appeal the verdict. "We are determined to defend the vitally important obligation of mandatory reporters to report suspected child abuse and protect the smallest and most vulnerable among us," attorney Howard Hunter said in a statement to Becker's.