The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services define “never events” as serious, costly errors in the delivery of healthcare that should never happen when proper protocols, communication and supervision are in place.
“Certain mistakes should never occur in a modern hospital, yet they do,” says Malone Law owner Adam Malone, who has been at the forefront of plaintiffs’ law for 26 years and is certified by the American Board of Professional Liability Attorneys and the National Board of Trial Advocates. “These cases reflect not just individual negligence, but system failures that turn routine care into catastrophic, life-altering harm.”
Malone has seen an increasing number of matters that fit this description: surgeries performed along improper pathways, inexcusable medication errors and patients who are ignored by medical decision-makers. In each scenario, the injury was not the result of unavoidable complications, but preventable breakdowns in the process.
For example, Malone started 2026 preparing for a trial against a major metropolitan hospital on behalf of a client, who was 42 when her interventional cardiologist injected air bubbles into her coronary arteries during a cardiac catheterization. This caused sudden cardiac arrest, and the client’s heart stopped for 22 minutes before she could be resuscitated. As a result, a mechanical heart pump was needed.
“The mechanical heart pump had to be placed through an artery in the groin, which obstructed blood flow to her leg,” Malone says of the now 45-year-old client. Consequently, her leg died and was amputated just below the hip. “This was completely preventable and would not have happened but for the injection of air into her heart. Rather than face us in trial, the hospital finally did the right thing and resolved the case with enough money to maximize her quality of life, for the rest of her life.”
- Some hospital injuries are preventable failures, not unavoidable complications.
- Malone Law examines medication errors, ignored birth plans, communication breakdowns and surgical mistakes that can cause permanent harm.
- One case involved a cardiac catheterization error, cardiac arrest and an amputation below the hip before the hospital resolved the claim.
- Read how accountability can help injured patients pursue compensation and encourage safer care.
Many never events occur due to what Malone calls “interdisciplinary communication failures” and a troubling blurring of professional roles.
“Nurses are sometimes left to shoulder responsibilities that properly belong to physicians, or inexperienced providers are allowed to proceed without meaningful supervision,” says Malone, who in 2016 and 2027 was named the Best Lawyers “Lawyer of the Year” in Medical Malpractice Law in Atlanta.
The result is that no one fully owns the patient’s care at the moment when a critical decision must be made. These failures also formed the basis of another case Malone planned to litigate in the latter half of 2026, involving a client whose birth plan was ignored.
A mother presented for a scheduled induction, and due to a prior difficult delivery, she told the providers that if anything unusual or abnormal occurs, stop the induction and perform a cesarean delivery. Within a few hours of the induction, the fetal monitor showed an abnormally low heart rate for the baby. The providers never told the mother, kept her in the dark, and allowed the situation to progress to the need for an emergency vaginal delivery.
“During the emergency delivery, the baby’s shoulder got stuck and as a result, nerve roots were ripped out of the spinal cord and permanently paralyzed her arm for the rest of her life,” Malone says. “Our role was to hold accountable the health care providers who ignored this mother’s instructions.”
Malone emphasizes that clear communication and respect for one’s professional limits are essential safeguards against tragedy. Ego, pressure and complacency in health care, he says, can override caution, leaving patients exposed to risks they never agreed to face.
“These cases are particularly compelling to jurors because they so starkly violate public expectations of hospital safety,” says Malone, who is a former president of the Georgia Trial Lawyers Association. “For example, jurors intuitively understand that a woman who enters a hospital with a broken ankle should not die from a hospital overdose of pain medication. We had that case, too.”
For Malone Law, litigating never events is about more than compensation. Each case is an opportunity to expose systemic weaknesses, address carelessness and encourage hospitals to adopt safer practices.
Malone says, “By holding health care institutions accountable for errors that should never happen, Malone Law aims to protect future patients from suffering the same avoidable harm.”
