Georgia jury awards boy $31 million over botched circumcision

A Georgia jury has awarded a five-year-old boy $31 million for a botched circumcision he received as a newborn. 

The boy, who has not been identified, was given the circumcision at Life Cycle Pediatrics in Riverdale when he was a 18 days old in 2013.

A lawsuit filed by the boy’s family said part of his penis was severed during the procedure. 

The family’s attorney, Neal Pope, said nobody recommended emergency surgery to fix the problem, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. 

The lawsuit says the boy suffers pain and will have a lifetime of mental anguish as a result of the circumcision. 

Midwife Melissa Jones and Dr Brian Register were found liable last Friday when the jury handed down their decision. 

Attorney Terrell W. Benton, who represents the nurse midwife and physician, had told jurors that $1 million should cover the boy’s medical expenses and costs of long-term therapy.   

But his attorney declared it was a $100 million case. 

Pope told the jury that the midwife accidentally slipped and severed the boy’s penis and that the doctor then called the clinic’s owner to alert them. 

The lawsuit said that neither Jones and Register recommended surgery.

Pope said the pair stored the boy’s severed tissue in a fridge and allowed the baby’s mother to take him home. 

The attorney argued that if the boy had been sent to the emergency room with the severed tissue, medical staff might have been able to reattach it. 

The boy’s mother said she had to put a medical instrument in his penis three times a day so it wouldn’t close up up the procedure. 

He has endured multiple surgeries to enable him to urinate more easily and potentially make it possible for him to have children in the future.