A Michigan appeals court has upheld a nearly $9.7 million judgment against Henry Ford Macomb Hospital in the case of a 41-year-old mother of two who died after developing a severe infection following cosmetic surgery in 2017. In a ruling dated October 23, 2026, the Michigan Court of Appeals rejected the hospital’s challenges to the verdict, finding no errors that warranted overturning the judgment.
The case centres on the death of Cathleen Allen, who underwent an abdominoplasty, commonly known as a tummy tuck, on May 26, 2017. Allen was admitted to Henry Ford Macomb Hospital’s emergency department on June 2 with chills, pain, weakness, fatigue, confusion and an inability to eat, according to the court’s opinion. The court record states that Dixit eventually operated on Allen on June 6, the day she died. The judgment included $4,336,988 for Allen’s future lost earning capacity, alongside other economic and non-economic damages. Allen’s death left behind two children, who were 19 and 15 at the time, according to the court record.
The hospital argued that the lost-earning-capacity award was not recoverable in the form presented under Michigan’s wrongful-death law.
Doctors suspected that Allen was suffering from septic shock when she arrived at the hospital, according to the appellate ruling. Medical experts who testified at trial said that controlling the source of an infection is critical when treating septic shock and that earlier intervention could have changed the outcome. James Attarian, an expert in internal medicine and hospital administration, testified that if doctors had surgically treated the infection during the first few days of Allen’s hospital admission, she would have survived, according to the court opinion.
She was treated in the intensive care unit (ICU) for five days before suffering cardiac arrest and being pronounced dead. The lawsuit alleged that delays in treating an infection following the operation contributed to Allen’s death. it separately held the hospital administratively negligent for failing to ensure that its patient-safety procedures were properly implemented and enforced While the jury found the surgeon professionally negligent. Her attending physician in the ICU, Ghada Mesleh, believed the shock was caused by an infection originating in the abdominal wound from her recent surgery. Mesleh consulted Vijay K. Dixit, the plastic surgeon who had performed Allen’s tummy tuck. However, Dixit initially advised doctors to look for another source of infection and did not believe that surgical intervention was necessary at that stage. The disagreement continued over the following days as ICU doctors evaluated possible sources of the infection. The estate’s case argued that the delay in addressing the suspected abdominal infection prevented timely treatment. His assessment was part of the evidence presented to the jury rather than a separate finding by the appeals court. The appeals court, however, found that the estate had also pursued damages for the loss of financial support suffered by Allen’s children and that the record supported the award. The estate argued that her death caused not only personal loss but also the loss of financial support she had provided to them.