Maya Kowalski was photographed socializing just days after her lawyers said she was too sore to appear at her $220 million negligence lawsuit against a Florida hospital.
Last Friday, her lawyer told reporters that the teenager’s complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS), a neuropathic disorder, had worsened due to the stress of the court proceedings.
The pain had become so severe that he was unable to attend the trial for several days, they maintained.
“It’s been horrible,” attorney Gregory Anderson said, according to Court TV. “Maya has CRPS lesions that come back. Not good.”
But attorneys for Johns Hopkins All Medical Center said in court Tuesday that Kowalski was well enough to go to town with several girlfriends, and they had social media photos to prove it.
In a saga chronicled in the hit Netflix documentary “Take Care of Maya,” Kowalski’s mother admitted the 10-year-old girl to the hospital in 2015 and told doctors she needed risky ketamine treatments to relieve her symptoms.
Maya Kowalski was photographed socializing over the weekend. Lawyers for the Sarasota County clerk argued that the injections contradicted her claims of severe pain. Sarasota County Clerk Kowalski was featured in the Netflix documentary “Take Care of Maya.” THOMAS BENDER/HERALD-TRIBUNE Pool Photo/ Thomas Bender/Sarasota Herald-Tribune Pool Photo/Thomas Bender / USA TODAY NETWORK
Skeptical of Beata Kowalski’s unorthodox demands, staff alerted Florida child welfare authorities, who removed Maya from her parents’ care and placed her in a state medical ward.
After being banned from seeing her daughter for 85 days and facing accusations of child abuse, Beata Kowalski committed suicide in the garage of her family home.
Claiming that the hospital wrongfully entrusted Maya and cruelly separated her from her mother, the Kowalski family is suing the facility for $220 million.
Maya Kowalski has testified that she still suffers from the debilitating effects of the disease and accused hospital staff of dismissing her complaints while she was under their care.
But taking advantage of social media images from the weekend, the hospital’s attorney, Ethen Shapiro, said he appeared to be in good health.
“This is Maya Kowalski’s life today,” Shapiro told the judge. “We do not aggravate a pre-existing condition. She is at her prom, she wears heels, she has friends… that completely contradicts her testimony.”
Kowalski’s lawyers argued that the photographs were inadmissible, but the judge in the case admitted several of them into evidence.
Jurors are weighing whether Kowalski’s doctors wrongly discounted treatments suggested by his mother or whether they had reason to suspect she was putting her son’s health at risk.
Beata Kowalski committed suicide three months after being banned from seeing Maya. Courtesy of Netflix
Staff believed Beata suffered from Proxy Munchausen Syndrome, in which caregivers invent or exaggerate a child’s ailments to get their attention.
Maya’s father, Jack Kowalski, alleges wrongful imprisonment, medical negligence and infliction of emotional distress.
Beata Kowalski had supported putting Maya in a coma with ketamine at a Mexican clinic and said the treatments had brought her daughter relief.
The Kowalskis claim the hospital was negligent. Courtesy of Netflix
A doctor who prescribed previous ketamine treatments to Maya previously testified that the approach was medically sound.
But testifying for the defense this week, Dr. Elliott Krane, professor emeritus of anesthesiology and chief of pain management at Stanford School of Medicine, said the ketamine regimen was dangerous and not permitted in the United States.
The trial is ongoing.
Categories: Trending
Source: vtt.edu.vn