Jury ties doctors’ errors to boy’s death

A Suffolk County jury found that two doctors at Children’s Hospital Boston – one of them the hospital’s former physician in chief – had caused the death of a 3-year-old Pennsylvania boy and voted to award his parents $15 million in damages.

The actual damage award will be less because of an agreement reached by the parties before the verdict. But legal specialists said the amount voted by the jury was unusually large for a medical malpractice case involving a death. Awards of that size are more common in cases in which a patient is severely injured as a result of malpractice and requires years of costly treatment, they said.

The boy died in December 2004, a year and a half after undergoing a procedure at the hospital for a birth defect. Jason went into Children’s a playful and active little boy. When he came out of the hospital, he was flown by air ambulance to a neurological rehabilitation facility near where he lived.

Jason had undergone eight unsuccessful procedures before his parents took him to Children’s in a desperate effort to save his life.

In an e-mail to Children’s staff about the verdict, Dr. James Mandell, chief executive of the hospital, wrote: “We are surprised and disappointed in this finding. We are confident that our clinicians provided outstanding care to this very sick child.’’

Michelle Davis, a hospital spokeswoman, said that the doctors will not appeal and that Lock’s stepping down as physician in chief was unrelated to the case.

Jason was born in July 2001 with Tetralogy of Fallot, a complex but usually treatable birth defect that affects the flow of blood through the heart. In his case, the defect was particularly serious and prevented his blood from carrying enough oxygen to his organs and limbs.