A jury will soon decide whether Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital is responsible for $220 million in damages in a case made famous by a Netflix documentary.
Closing arguments in the medical malpractice lawsuit filed by the family of 17-year-old Maya Kowalski were delivered Nov. 7 with the case being handed off to the jury afterward, multiple news outlets reported. Several physicians and nurses from the St. Petersburg, Fla., hospital testified during the eight-week trial.
The family sued the hospital after it called a child abuse hotline on her mother, Beata Kowalski, in 2016 for requesting a high dose of ketamine to treat Maya Kowalski for chronic pain. The family had told the hospital they had previously put her into an experimental ketamine-induced coma in Mexico. Staffers reportedly suspected her mother had Munchausen syndrome by proxy.
Maya Kowalski was separated from her family for more than two months, and Beata Kowalski died by suicide the following year. Netflix released "Take Care of Maya" in June.
The hospital rested its case Nov. 1 but not before showing recent photos of Maya Kowalski celebrating Halloween and school dances that it says prove the hospital's intervention helped her, Fox News reported Nov. 3.
"This is the life of Maya Kowalski today," hospital attorney Ethen Shapiro told the court, according to the story. "We did not aggravate a preexisting condition. She's at her prom, she's out in heels, has friends — it's in complete contradiction to her testimony."
Maya testified that she cried before the homecoming photo was taken because she was in such intense pain, Fox News reported.
Before the case went to the jury, one juror had to be dismissed for medical issues and a controversy erupted over the hospital's accreditation, Fox 13 reported Nov. 7.