Jason S. is a brilliant high level software engineer for a national software company based in Seattle. He was married to his wife of 25 years with two kids in high school and college. He was an active outdoors guy who enjoyed mountain biking and traveling. As a result of his active lifestyle, he developed a shoulder problem, and ultimately had to have his shoulder operated on at a local Proliance day surgery center in June of 2021.

He arrived at the surgical center and was prepped for the shoulder surgery. He was then placed under general anesthesia and underwent his shoulder surgery without any problems. The surgeon left the operating room while the anesthesiologist and three OR staff remained behind to attend to Jason while he came out of anesthesia and surgery. However, while still unconscious and sitting in the surgical “beach chair” he was in during the operation, the straps holding him in the chair were removed, and the staff in the OR turned away from him and he fell from the beach chair to the floor, hitting the floor headfirst, causing a brain injury.

He immediately developed all of the classic signs of TBI-fuzzy thinking, vision and balance issues, headaches, emotional lability and sensitivity to light and sound. He became highly fatigued during the day and found it very hard to work or think clearly after the early afternoon. 

Over the course of the next several years, Jason was treated extensively by local neurologists, vision therapists, speech therapists, and other brain injury specialists. Ultimately, his neurologist placed him on permanent disability, preventing him from working more than 30 hours a week, in contrast to the 50 hours a week he worked before the head injury. 

His work and home life were dramatically affected. As a senior software manager, his ability to run long meetings via Zoom was dramatically affected due to his vision issues and inability to multitask as he did before the TBI. He would become cognitively spent by the early afternoon and not able to work as he did before. He would have to take multiple breaks during the day and saw the size of the teams he managed drop dramatically as large software projects were taken from him. He lost out on promotions that would  have made him much more money at his company.

His home life was also altered significantly. When he got home, rather than doing active things with his wife and kids, he became a recluse due to his exhaustion, and would often times sleep when he got home from work. His wife described a changed man who left as an active, curious man the morning of the surgery, but came back a very different person who suddenly had to calibrate his every activity to see if he would be able to get through it or have enough cognitive of physical energy to complete that task. When he tried to be there for his wife and travel, his travel was very affected as well. He was not able to handle large crowds or noisy restaurants and had to take frequent breaks to nap or rest. His activities after the TBI were reduced dramatically to low key activities that did not cognitively overload him. 

Jason retained BILS to assist him. Both defendants denied liability, and suit was filed. After three years of engaging in discovery regarding how this event could happen and why the two defendants were denying responsibility, trial was finally set for December 2, 2025. BILS arranged for numerous treating doctors and liability experts to testify why the fault was entirely on the two defendants. Immediately before trial, both defendants finally admitted liability, leaving only the issue of what damages were caused for the jury to decide. However, the anesthesiologist defendant then agreed to pay its policy limits of $4,000,000 to avoid the trial, leaving only the surgical center as a defendant.

Trial proceeded against the remaining defendant, and after 11 days of trial, BILS obtained a verdict of $8,143,000.