On November 15, 2020, my 20-year-old son, Cooper Leigh Whitten, died from complications of medical malpractice. His care was provided by Sarasota Memorial Hospital. Today, as SB 1366 and HB 145 moves through the Florida Legislature, I am speaking out so that no other family has to endure what mine has and so public hospitals can be held accountable for substandard care.
Cooper was a junior at Stetson University studying criminal justice when he came home for a weekend and was involved in a motorcycle accident. An investigation later showed that a driver crossed into his lane, causing the crash. Cooper suffered a severe leg injury that required surgery and a skin graft. His follow-up care involved doctors, nurses, and a home health aide associated with Sarasota Memorial Hospital.
At first, Cooper’s recovery appeared to be progressing. But something was clearly wrong. He was overwhelmingly fatigued and frequently short of breath, sometimes to the point of fainting. When we raised these concerns, his health care providers dismissed them, telling us there was nothing to worry about.
On a Sunday night, Cooper was recovering at his father’s home in Punta Gorda. As they were heading to bed, Cooper went into the bathroom. Moments later, he called out for his father and died in his father’s arms. The medical examiner determined that Cooper died from a massive pulmonary embolism.
We later learned that a prescribed blood thinner had been lost somewhere in his health care process. That failure caused the symptoms Cooper experienced in the days before his death, symptoms that were clear warning signs of a life-threatening condition but were never treated as such.
I will grieve my son for the rest of my life. But I am also angry, angry at how Sarasota Memorial Hospital failed Cooper and angry at how Florida’s legal system protected that failure from meaningful scrutiny.
When I tried to pursue a malpractice case, not for revenge but to expose dangerous practices and warn the public, I discovered that the system was stacked against families like mine. Sarasota Memorial Hospital is shielded by Florida’s sovereign immunity law, which treats certain public hospital systems as government entities with severely limited liability.
Under current law, these hospitals can be sued for only $200,000 per injured person and $300,000 per incident, regardless of the severity of harm or loss of life. Families also have just 24 months to pursue legal action.
In reality, these limits make it nearly impossible to obtain legal representation. In Cooper’s case, ten law firms refused to take us on, not because the malpractice was not obvious, but because the cap made the case financially impractical and the timeframe too short to gather evidence. Doctors and nurses are understandably reluctant to testify against colleagues within the same hospital system, further tilting the scales.
After months of effort and personal connections in the legal community, I finally found an attorney. The hospital ultimately paid only the maximum amount allowed by law.
How many other families never even get that far? How many cases are underpaid, dismissed, or never filed at all because sovereign immunity shields public hospitals from accountability, hundreds, perhaps thousands?
More than a dozen hospital systems in Florida operate under this protection, including Sarasota Memorial Hospital System, UF Health Hospitals, USF Health, Lee Health, Broward Health, Jackson Health System, and all VA hospitals and facilities. Patients who can afford private hospitals should know that private facilities are not protected by sovereign immunity.
There is, however, a path forward.
The Florida House has already passed HB 145, filed by Fiona McFarland, by a 104-7 vote. The bill would raise the malpractice cap to $500,000 per person and $1 million per incident for cases beginning October 1, with a scheduled increase in 2030 to $600,000 per person and $1.2 million per incident.
McFarland has described the bill as a measured and responsible update to a centuries-old doctrine that strengthens fairness, consistency, and accountability. HB 145 does not eliminate sovereign immunity. It modernizes it. Yet public hospitals and insurers are lobbying hard to defeat this reasonable reform.
For the sake of patient safety and in Cooper’s memory, Floridians should contact their state Senators and Representatives and ask them to support HB 145 during this Legislative Session, which began January 13.
When Sarasota Memorial Hospital first responded to Cooper’s death, they offered $2,500. That offer revealed two things: a shocking disregard for the value of human life and the confidence of an institution that knows the law protects it from real consequences.
As Americans and as Floridians, we have the right to be heard when we are harmed, the right to fair compensation, and the right to accountability from institutions entrusted with our lives. Reforming Florida’s sovereign immunity law through HB 145 is a necessary step toward restoring those rights and ensuring that public hospitals are held to the same standards of care as private ones.
Cooper’s death should not be in vain.
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Marilyn Moss lives in Sarasota.
