Woman Awarded Millions After Hospital Mistakenly Removed Her Bladder During Routine Surgery

A woman in Maine was awarded a multimillion-dollar settlement from a Kennebec County jury after a hospital accidentally removed her bladder during what was supposed to be a routine surgery.

Emily Mitchell was given $17 million following a two-week medical malpractice trial that is designed to cover past and future medical expenses as well as pain and suffering, emotional distress and loss of enjoyment of life stemming from the unexpected and unnecessary loss of her bladder.

According to a press release from her attorneys, Berman & Simmons, Mitchell went in for surgery at Northern Light Health on March 1, 2023, for a laparoscopic procedure to remove a benign ovarian cyst. Following the procedure, her condition worsened almost immediately and she was taken to the ER for emergency surgery. There, surgeons discovered that, during her initial surgery, her bladder had been mistakenly removed.

Instead of the cyst, it was determined the original surgeons removed “full-thickness bladder tissue.” It was also determined that there was “insufficient healthy bladder tissue remaining to reconstruct or repair the organ.”

For more than eight months, Mitchell’s attorneys allege she relied on bilateral nephrostomy tubes to drain urine directly from her kidneys while enduring recurring urinary tract infections, kidney infections, multiple medical procedures and other complications. Eventually, she was referred to a hospital in Massachusetts that was able to perform a complex reconstructive surgery that used a portion of her small intestine to create something that essentially functions as a bladder.

However, even with the reconstruction, her health problems are far from over. The press release from her lawyers notes that she still requires self-catheterization multiple times a day and a lot of ongoing medical care related to the unexpected loss of her bladder.

“For our clients, this isn’t just a legal victory—it’s the closure they’ve needed for a long time,” Mitchell’s attorney, Susan A Faunce, said in a statement. “They can finally begin to move forward, knowing that what happened to them was seen, heard, and acknowledged. This verdict won’t undo the pain our clients have endured, but it does offer something they haven’t had in a long time: closure. They can finally put this chapter behind them.”