A Utah judge awarded parents Anyssa Zancanella and Danniel McMicheal nearly $1 billion after a hospital’s negligence during labor and delivery resulted in their baby being born with severe brain damage. In August 2025, Judge Patrick Corum found Steward Health Care liable for the botched delivery of their daughter Azaylee on October 14, 2019, at Jordan Valley Medical Center in West Valley City, Utah, the Salt Lake Tribune reported.
Zancanella and McMicheal were awarded $951 million — the largest damages in the state’s history.
Because of the hospital’s negligence, Azaylee, now 5, will suffer a lifetime of disabilities. “[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,” Corum said, per the newspaper. “Literally, this was the most dangerous place on the planet for her to have given birth.”
He added, “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.”
On October 12, 2019, Zancanella went into labor while she and McMicheal were in Salt Lake City on a getaway from their Wyoming home. They alleged in the lawsuit that Zancanella was given “excessive” doses of Pitocin to induce labor and ignored by nurses and other hospital staff, per the Daily Mail.
“This was the very first, or one of the very first times, that either of the assigned bedside nurses had individually been assigned a laboring patient,” the lawsuit claimed.
More than a day after she was admitted to Jordan Valley Medical Center, Zancanella underwent a C-section. A lack of oxygen during labor reportedly resulted in brain damage to the baby.
“[The obstetrician] abandoned mother and fetus/infant when she was fully aware of significant and dangerous issues with the ongoing labor process and the ongoing health and well-being of the fetus,” the lawsuit alleged, according to the Daily Mail.
Azaylee reportedly had a “misshapen head” and a “swollen” face, as well as bruising and bulging on the front of her scalp, according to the lawsuit. The newborn was airlifted to Primary Children’s Hospital’s intensive care unit in Salt Lake City for medical complications.
Today, Azaylee requires around-the-clock care because she regularly has seizures, the New York Post reported. The family sleeps together in a large bed so they can tend to her in the event of a seizure in the middle of the night. Additionally, the family always has oxygen on hand to help with Azaylee’s seizures.
The 5-year-old undergoes occupational and physical therapy and is only able to attend kindergarten for a few hours each day. She is mostly nonverbal and does not have the cognitive or executive functioning typical of children her age.
Steward has denied the allegations and any liability. Two years ago, Jordan Valley Medical Center was renamed Holy Cross Hospital-West Valley after CommonSpirit Health acquired it, the Post reported.
Azaylee “had her life stolen. We all did. We had her taken from us,” Zancanella said during a bench trial, per the Post. “She is trapped. I know that my daughter is in there, but she can’t come out and I think of that every day.”
