A general view of the Florida Capitol on Monday, Jan 12, 2026, in Tallahassee, Fla.
Photo by Matias J. Ocner
mocner@miamiherald.com
Tallahassee
Florida lawmakers tried in recent weeks to intervene in an unusual Miami case where Mount Sinai Medical Center CEO Gino Santorio and other top officials are being sued for a baby’s “permanent brain damage.”
They appear to have failed. Had they succeeded, the CEO could have been shielded from liability under the same law created to protect the hospital and doctors who delivered the child.
That law, which created the Florida Birth-Related Neurological Injury Compensation Association, or NICA, is intended to shield doctors and hospitals from malpractice lawsuits in specific cases where a preventable permanent neurological birth injury is caused in delivery. In return, the NICA program is supposed to pay for the injured baby’s medical treatments and other services.
Now the question at center in the lawsuit against Santorio is whether executives like him are also protected under the law. The Miami-Dade judge presiding over Santorio’s case ruled he is not. His attorneys have appealed, and deny that he was negligent. They said in a court document he and other hospital administrators are protected under existing law from lawsuits pertaining to the child’s birth injury for several reasons, including that policies he set “would have guided the medical decision-making” pertaining to the baby’s delivery.
But, instead of letting the courts work it out, lawmakers tried to shield Santorio and other hospital executives in a bill, SB 1668, updating the 1988 NICA law. The issue became public for the first time in a Senate Rules Committee last week when a Republican moved to insert language that would strip protection of hospital executives and administrators from the bill, leading lawmakers and hospital lobbyists to publicly acknowledge that Santorio’s case was the driver behind the proposed change in statute.
“We currently have a pending legal case here in Florida related to an administrator or hospital CEO who is being sued over claims related to a NICA-related injury,” the sponsor of the bill, Sen. Colleen Burton, said during the March 3 committee meeting.
Burton, a Winter Haven Republican, later said she was not attempting to “solve” Santorio’s case.
Mark Delegal, a lobbyist for the Safety Net Hospital Alliance of Florida, which represents Mount Sinai, laid out the stakes for his client to lawmakers.
“This is a runaway judge in circuit court in Miami-Dade County, and we’re just begging you to fix it,” Delegal said. “We beg you to fix this issue, or there will be incentives to close maternity wards and for [obstetrics and gynecology doctors] to walk away from their practices.”
Sen. Jason Pizzo further clarified that Santorio’s case motivated the proposed change to shield hospital administrators under NICA when he said he wanted to “apologize to Gino Santorio, who called me this weekend to discuss this bill, that I have not called back on purpose.”
Pizzo, a Hollywood independent, then asked Delegal: “Do you think it’s appropriate that we’re just going to legislate this as a fix to an open case in a different branch of government?”
“You know of course my answer is going to be, absolutely yes, because you have the power to legislate,” Delegal responded. “You can fix this problem right now when you see that a judge has misinterpreted a program in a statute, and is about to eviscerate its effectiveness.”
Delegal argued that the case against Santorio would carve out a new lane for lawyers to go after hospital administrators for money they won’t get through the NICA program. He believes that if Santorio is found liable, it will harm hospitals by making their liability insurance go up—something NICA was supposed to prevent—and lead to financial problems, and thus, maternity ward closures.
But in a rare turn of events, Delegal, on behalf of hospitals, and top Senate Republicans lost the argument. Burton’s proposal to change the law so that it’s clear administrators are also shielded from malpractice lawsuits related to a baby’s brain injury during delivery was rejected. The House adopted the change.
It’s unclear whether the Legislature will pass the bill without the legal fix benefitting Santorio. Lawmakers are expected to conclude their annual legislative session on Friday.
House Speaker Daniel Perez told reporters that his chamber’s bill “has nothing to do with” the lawsuit.
“I know there’s ongoing litigation. I don’t know the details of the case,” Perez, a Miami Republican, said on Tuesday. “The bill wasn’t moving in one way or another because of a litigation that was active.”
Santorio told the Herald/Times in a statement that “protecting access to maternity care remains a priority at Mount Sinai.”
“At a time when many hospitals in South Florida and across the country have shuttered their labor and delivery units due to rising costs and liability pressures, Mount Sinai continues to invest in needed expansions for our community and growing families,” Santorio continued.
He added: “Our commitment to mothers and babies has also been recognized nationally, with Mount Sinai named one of America’s Best Maternity Hospitals by Newsweek for both 2024 and 2025.”
THE CASE CENTRAL TO DEBATE
In 2024, lawyers for two parents filed two separate lawsuits relating to the C-section delivery of their baby two years earlier by Mount Sinai Medical Center. Just one of the complaints, a general negligence suit, names Santorio as a defendant.
One of the cases is a classic medical malpractice lawsuit against the delivering physicians.
The judge ruled the case wouldn’t be heard until there was an administrative ruling on whether the child, identified in the suit as EE, qualified for the NICA program. If EE is brought into the program, the malpractice case will end without determining the cause of the injuries, and the child will be given certain lifetime medical benefits. The Herald has investigated problems patients have faced in getting access to those benefits, leading to changes in the law.
The second case is at the center of the debate surrounding the proposed NICA changes this year in Tallahassee, which largely center on the relationship between the program and Medicaid, health insurance for the needy.
The parents allege in that lawsuit that Santorio failed to “implement systems and processes to remove babies from their mothers’ wombs in under 30 minutes,” causing the child to suffer “severe, permanent injuries” due to a lack of oxygen during delivery.
One of the ways in which Santorio failed to implement safe delivery practices was by allowing “an impaired person to provide care to people, including Plaintiff Mother and Minor Plaintiff Baby,” the suit alleges, referring specifically to one of the physicians who delivered EE.
The physician was impaired, they argue, because she was traumatized from a sexual assault she experienced in 2015 after completing her residency program at a medical center in New York. The doctor filed a civil action relating to the alleged sexual assault in 2023—a year after she delivered EE.
According to the New York harassment suit, while at a graduation event with about 100 people, her residency instructor “assaulted” her in front of her mother, friend and others by “grabbing her buttocks” and stating, “I have waited four years to do this and now I can, because you are no longer MY resident.”
She “suffered profound psychological distress, which forced her to undergo extensive psychotherapy, and derailed her career,” according to the lawsuit.
A judge thought EE’s parents’ argument that the delivering physician’s “impaired” frame of mind contributed to their child’s disability was legitimate enough for the case to move forward. It’s now on appeal. The doctor’s attorney has denied the allegation.
Santorio told the Herald/Times that Mount Sinai cannot comment on pending litigation.
Sen. Jonathan Martin is the lawmaker who pushed against expanding the shield beyond those directly involved in the delivery of a baby in Burton’s bill. In debate last week, he argued that the Mount Sinai case wouldn’t open “up lawsuits to anybody who feels like they can sue somebody for walking down the street.”
“What’s unique about this case out of Mount Sinai is that somebody, for the first time, had evidence” that someone outside the actual delivery of the baby breached their “duty” of care, said Martin, a Fort Myers Republican. “They put that evidence in the complaint and a judge thought it was valid.”
Martin told the Herald/Times his comment was based on the complaint against Santorio, which alleges that he allowed an impaired person to deliver the baby, but does not explicitly refer to the sexual harassment suit.
“That’s not a medical issue,” and therefore, NICA should not apply, Martin said.
Rules Chairwoman Kathleen Passidomo, a former Senate president and Republican from Naples, tried to fail Martin’s amendment on a voice vote. But lawmakers asked for the vote to be tallied, and it passed.