The woman, Caroline Malatesta, was 32 years old and halfway through her fourth pregnancy when she saw a TV ad for Brookwood Medical Center in Birmingham, Alabama.
The ad promised “natural birth” services and emphasized freedom of movement and natural birthing plans. What she actually experienced was far from what the hospital promised.
Instead of being allowed to labor and deliver in her chosen position, she was forced to labor on her back by nurses who physically held her down. She was also forced into continuous fetal monitoring when she wanted an unmedicated birth.
According to her lawyers:
Caroline had no freedom of movement; instead, she was restrained, sometimes forcibly. Caroline was offered no choice; it was the nurses’ way or no way.”
The nurses actually held her son’s crowning head inside her body for six minutes while waiting for a doctor to arrive.
The traumatic experience left her with a severe nerve injury — pudendal neuralgia — which left her in chronic pain. She was also diagnosed with PTSD. She filed a lawsuit in February 2014.
A jury in Jefferson County Circuit Court awarded her $10 million in compensatory damages, plus $1 million to her husband for loss of consortium and $5 million in punitive damages.
Source: Yahoo Beauty