San Francisco Superior Court officials set a trial date for a legal case in which the mother of a 6-year-old boy claimed that UCSF medical staff tore a hole in her son’s heart — leaving him permanently brain-damaged and in need of 24-hour care.
The boy, Damon Davila, was 13 months old when he was taken into treatment at UCSF for what his mother, Kim Melville, 44, thought was a cold but was in fact a lung infection that rapidly worsened, Melville said.
UCSF medical staff placed a thin tube, called a cannula, to allow his lungs to rest, according to the trial brief shared by Davila’s lawyer Moseley Collins.
Davila’s family, who live in Santa Rosa, claims that the medical team’s failure to properly secure the cannula during a procedure cauesd it to pierce Davila’s heart, which led to a cardiac arrest and a code blue — a life-threatening event requiring resuscitation — for 57 minutes.
The result was a catastrophic brain injury that has left Davila with permanent brain, heart, and lung damage, as well as quadriparetic cerebral palsy, according to the brief.
“He’ll never walk, he’ll never speak, he’ll never feed himself,” said Collins. “When he’s 25 years old he’ll be lying on a bed with a diaper on.”
Kristen Bole, executive director of public affairs at UCSF, declined to comment on the case because it was in active litigation.
The trial is expected to begin on Sept. 19. Davila’s family is seeking economic damages of more than $23 million from the Regents of the University of California, which operates UCSF Medical Center.
“I’m nervous,” Melville said, referring to the trial. “It just seems like no one’s wanting to take responsibility for what happened.”
The goal of the lawsuit is to obtain the funds necessary to take care of him, and to hold the medical institution accountable, Collins said.
“We’re not asking for people to be fired — in fact, some of these providers are good providers,” said Collins. But you have to take accountability for when things go wrong.”
Annie Vainshtein (she/her) is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: [email protected]