SALT LAKE CITY — A Utah judge has awarded nearly $1 billion to a family whose baby suffered severe, permanent brain damage during a botched delivery at a West Valley City hospital, calling the facility “the most dangerous place on the planet” for childbirth.
Judge Patrick Corum handed down the staggering $951 million judgment earlier this month against Steward Health Care, the then-operator of Jordan Valley Medical Center, after finding staff grossly negligent in the 2019 delivery of Azaylee McMicheal, now 5.
The delivery gone wrong
According to court records, Anyssa Zancanella went into labor while visiting Salt Lake City with her partner, Danniel McMicheal, in October 2019. At Jordan Valley Medical Center, she was assigned nurses so inexperienced they had finished training the day she arrived.
Those nurses, the lawsuit said, administered dangerously high doses of the labor-inducing drug Pitocin for hours, despite clear warning signs: the drug was not working, the baby’s blood pressure was spiking, and Zancanella had developed a fever.
The on-call physician, just steps away, allegedly returned to sleep rather than intervene. Azaylee was not delivered until more than a day later — finally born by emergency C-section with a swollen face, bruising, and signs of oxygen deprivation.
A lifetime of disability
Azaylee was airlifted to Primary Children’s Hospital in Salt Lake City for intensive care, but the damage was irreversible. Today, she suffers from frequent seizures, requires constant supervision, and is unable to perform basic functions expected of children her age.
“She is trapped. I know that my daughter is in there, but she can’t come out,” her mother said during the three-day bench trial.
Judge Corum echoed that devastation in his ruling: “The person she was to be, the person she deserved to be, is trapped inside a brain-damaged child. I cannot think of anything more profound, total, or complete than that loss.”
Record-setting award
The $951 million judgment is the largest in Utah’s history. Corum said Zancanella “would have been better off delivering this baby at the bathroom of a gas station, or in a hut somewhere in Africa, than in this hospital.”
Yet the victory may be symbolic. Steward Health Care, once the largest physician-owned hospital chain in the U.S., is in bankruptcy, owing billions to creditors. Lawyers for the family hope to collect at least the punitive damages portion — roughly half of the award.
Life after the ruling
Azaylee’s parents now structure their lives entirely around her needs. The family of four shares a single bed to monitor her nighttime seizures and carries oxygen with them everywhere. Azaylee receives physical and occupational therapy but can only attend kindergarten for a few hours a day.
Her parents are seeking a service dog to help detect seizures in real time. “Azaylee had her life stolen. We all did. We had her taken from us,” Zancanella said.
Hospital’s silence
Steward Health Care denied wrongdoing in 2024 filings but later abandoned its legal defense after its attorneys withdrew, citing nonpayment. The hospital has since been renamed Holy Cross Hospital–West Valley under new ownership by CommonSpirit Health.
Neither Steward nor the medical staff involved responded to requests for comment.
For the Zancanella family, however, the ruling stands as recognition of their daughter’s suffering — even if the billion-dollar judgment may never be fully paid.