A Bronx woman left severely handicapped after a 911 call gone wrong won a record-setting $ 172 million payout Wednesday.
The jury verdict in favor of Tiffany Applewhite, 29 — who hasn’t been able to walk or talk since a botched EMS response to her home on a routine call when she was 12 — came after a three-week trial in Bronx Supreme Court.
“It’s a heartbreaking case,” said Applewhite’s lawyer, Tom Moore.
He said his client has total awareness — but she can’t move or communicate because of the bungling by city EMTs.
“They broke every rule in the book,” Moore said.
As a result, “she’s literally trapped in her own body,” the lawyer added.
In 1998, Applewhite reacted badly when a home nurse gave her a cortisone steroid shot to help the pre-teen with a recurring eye condition.
She labored to breath for six long minutes until an ambulance arrived — but the two EMTs neglected to bring an oxygen mask or defibrillator with them to the fifth-floor apartment, nor did they arrange backup.
“She went from respiratory arrest into cardiac arrest,” Moore said.
The girl’s mom, who worked as a clerk at Montefiore Medical Center two miles away, suggested they just take her daughter there. But the EMTs said they had to call for a special ambulance, which didn’t arrive until 20 minutes later.
“If they’d just taken the girl to the hospital, they could have saved her brain,” Moore said.
The case dragged on for years and was even dismissed at one point, further preventing Applewhite from getting therapies that might have been able to help her, the lawyer said.
“It’s a good thing, everything is fine now,” a relative at the family’s Edenwald Houses residence said Wednesday night.
The city Law Department said it will appeal.
With Kerry Burke
Yahoo Local News – New York Daily News
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