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 A Miami Gardens couple won a $33.8 million medical malpractice judgment in April after a South Florida obstetrician was found negligent during delivery of their baby, who was born with permanent brain damage. But as the couple would later find out José A. Iglesias Miami Herald 
 
 A Miami Gardens couple won a $33.8 million medical malpractice judgment in April after a South Florida obstetrician was found negligent during delivery of their baby, who was born with permanent brain damage. But as the couple would later find out José A. Iglesias Miami Herald 

 MIAMI - The federal government will have to pay a Miami Gardens family a $33.8 million award in a medical malpractice lawsuit after a judge ruled on Monday that a federally employed doctor's decisions caused a teen's baby boy to suffer irreversible brain damage. 
 
 U.S. District Judge Robert N. Scola awarded the baby's mother, Marla Dixon, $3.3 million, and the father, Earl Reese-Thornton, $1.1 million for their pain and suffering. Scola awarded $21.7 million for the boy's economic damages and $7.6 million for his pain and suffering. 
 
 Dixon was a patient at Jessie Trice Community Health Center in Miami Gardens. Dr. Ata Atogho was the on-call physician at the community center, which provides care to the uninsured and undocumented with the help of federal funding. 
 
 While she was at North Shore Medical Center, Dixon was also under the care of an experienced labor and delivery nurse. She testified that Atogho's claims that he offered Dixon a cesarean section and that she declined were false. 
 
 Both the nurse and Reese-Thornton testified that the 19-year-old mother was yelling, "Just cut me!" 
 
 The nurse said Atogho ignored her request despite the baby's slowed heart rate and left Dixon for another delivery. He was also reportedly on the phone with his financial adviser. When the baby was born on Dec. 2, 2013, he wasn't breathing. 
 
 "At the anticipated, joyful moment of birth of a crying, bouncing baby, they are instead presented with the dreadful specter of a blue, floppy, lifeless child," Scola wrote in his order. 
 
 It was not a high-risk pregnancy. After the baby was revived, the parents learned that he had suffered brain damage because of a lack of oxygen. Medical experts from both the defense and the plaintiffs agreed that a C-section could have prevented her baby's brain damage. 
 
 "The court has considered all the evidence in the case, including the testimony of the defendant's life expectancy expert, who has opined [the 3-year-old boy] has a life expectancy of an additional 9 to 12 years," Scola wrote. 
 
 Florida's statutory caps did not limit the award, which the government will have to pay in periodic payments. 
 
 Charles White of the U.S. Attorney's Office in Miami led the federal government's defense team. The family's attorneys were from two Miami law firms: Vidian Mallard and Richard Sharp of Mallard & Sharp and Lauri Ross of Ross & Girten. 
 
 Copyright 2017 by WPLG Local10.com - All rights reserved.
– Marla Dixon was a 19-year-old mother-to-be who had gotten her prenatal care from the federally funded Jessie Trice Community Health Center in Miami. Nurses and midwives met with her along the way, and before giving birth to son Earl Reese-Thornton Jr. on Dec. 2, 2013, things had been progressing well. The birth, she alleged in a lawsuit, was disastrous. Earl Jr. had to be revived after entering the world and suffered permanent severe brain damage due to lack of oxygen. The judge agreed Dr. Ata Atogho was at fault, with the verdict noting he left her room for extended spells, once to speak to his stockbroker for eight minutes; with fetal heart rate monitors indicating the baby was in severe distress, the doctor also should have performed a C-section but didn't. The $33.8 million Dixon and her child will receive as a result won't cost Atogho a penny. That's because he wasn't the one being sued; rather, the US government was, as it's liable for any injuries its medical employees cause, explains the Miami Herald. Not only does Dixon say Atogho never apologized, she also says he lied, something backed up by the testimony of a nurse who noted Atogho wrote "refused c/s" [that's C-section] in Dixon's medical records; on the contrary, the nurse testified she yelled, "Just cut me." Local 10 reports the judge in his order cited a defense expert who says the child will live only nine to 12 more years. Though the head of Jessie Trice says Atogho is no longer connected to its centers, he has not been reprimanded and his Florida medical license is currently "clear and active." This in spite of three other teen moms who have sued over babies delivered by Atogho in 2013 who ended up brain damaged or disabled. (This woman sued her doctor after becoming pregnant when she thought she couldn't.)