Melrose Family Loses Appeal in Death of Their Baby

BOSTON - The state Appeals Court has rejected a claim of judicial bias by a Melrose couple who lost a medical malpractice lawsuit involving the 2009 death of their infant daughter three days after her birth.

Kristen and Glen Sullivan, the parents of the late Conleigh Rose, claimed in their appeal and request for a new trial that Suffolk Superior Court Judge Linda E. Giles erred in her rulings and her instructions to the jury in the 2014 trial.

The Appeals Court notes that the "more disturbing allegation'' made by the Sullivans is accusing the judge of "persistent favoritism and biased conduct.''
But the Appeals Court ruled against the Sullivans saying, "We conclude that the allegations of judicial bias in the plaintiffs' motion for a new trial are unfounded...''
The Sullivans filed a 2010 lawsuit against Dr. Thomas Connolly and Debbie Jellyman RN claiming negligence, medical malpractice and wrongful death in their baby's Aug. 15, 2009 death. A central issue at the trial was related to the fetal heart rate tracings, the Appeals Court wrote. After a trial in April 2014, a jury ruled in favor of Connolly and Jellyman.

The tracings are electronically monitored to ensure that a fetus maintains a minimally health heart rate before and during delivery. The Sullivans claims the doctors were negligent by failing to monitor the baby's tracings with appropriate care and failing to recognize the tracings showed an unacceptably slow heart rate. As a result, the doctors failed to perform an emergency cesarean section in a timely fashion.

The doctors argued that the tracings showed a reassuring heart rate, and that a cesarean section was performed at the appropriate point in time during delivery when the mother's dilation failed to progress beyond nine centimeters.

The original tracings could not be found. The Sullivans, through their attorney, suggested that the defendants were the last people to have the tracings. Giles interupted this "thinly veiled reference to spoiliation'' and instructed the jury to disregard any mention of the missing original tracings.

"The judge was entitled to guard against deleterious inferences unsupported by evidence, and her doing so demonstrates no bias,'' the Appeals Court wrote.

The Sullivan also argued that the judge improperly instructed the jury that a "duty of care'' was owed only to the mother rather than mother and infant. But the Appeals Court wrote that the record showed Giles told the jury to consider the standard of medical care owed to the baby by the doctors.

As for judicial bias, the Sullivans complained that the judge allowed the defendants to testify as experts as to their own standard of care in this instance. But the Appeals Court found "a balanced approach'' by the judge as to expert testimony.

In addition, the Sullivans claimed Giles displayed "collusion'' with the doctors, having "snickered, sneared, and delivered unfair and unbalanced rulings'' berating the plaintiff's attorney and subjecting him to unequal treatment.

"Conspicuously absent from the record are any sworn statements from either of the plaintiffs' trial attorneys,'' the Appeals Court wrote.

Kristen Sullivan made news in April of 2011 after she went public with allegations that she was being discriminated against after she was notified one week after her daughter's death that her job at the state Department of Higher Education was being eliminated.

The family's house went into forclosure and the family lost their health insurance, according to reports.