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Maine jury awards $17 million in medical malpractice case; defendant hospital has since closed

7/28/2026

A Kennebec County jury awarded Emily Mitchell $17 million last Thursday after finding that surgeons at Northern Light Inland Hospital removed her bladder during a procedure intended to treat a benign ovarian cyst.

The verdict is the largest medical malpractice award in Kennebec County history, and it arrived against a health system whose Waterville hospital has since permanently closed.

The case: a routine surgery that caused irreversible harm The surgery was scheduled after imaging showed a benign ovarian cyst had grown significantly.

What followed, according to attorneys at Berman & Simmons, was not a complication in the conventional sense.