A claim about Nazi imagery was made in a court filing this week by the Florida hospital that was recently found civilly liable for medically kidnapping a young girl to the point that it drove her mother to suicide.
The ordeal suffered by then-10-year-old Maya Kowalski and her family is famously depicted in the popular and critically acclaimed Netflix documentary, “Take Care of Maya.” A roughly two-month-long civil trial earlier this year reprised the claims made in that film against the hospital for the way staff there treated the chronically ill girl – and then some – including her false imprisonment and battery.
In November, a six-person jury in Sarasota County unanimously found Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg liable for the incidents leading up to the January 2017 death of Beata Kowalski, 43. Jurors awarded the Kowalski family far more than they even requested – a total of $261 million in compensatory and punitive damages to make up for their loss and to punish the hospital.
Now, All Children’s is asking the judge overseeing the case for a new trial. The request, in a series of motions filed in recent weeks, is based on various incidents of alleged misconduct by one juror in particular.
The crux of the latest juror misconduct claim, which was filed as a second supplement to the overarching new trial motion on Thursday, is the idea that Juror Number 1 had an extreme dislike of one of the defense witnesses, a hospital employee named Sally Smith.
One of three exhibits attached to the filing obtained by Law&Crime is a note allegedly written by the juror in question during the trial:
A disputed note where a juror in the Maya Kowalski trial is alleged to have rendered a defense witness name into the symbol of the Nazi SS. (Court filing)
“Juror Number 1 has printed letter ‘S’ throughout the note normally, with a curve in the spine, EXCEPT that he printed his ‘S’ with sharp angles when printing Dr. Sally Smith’s name,” the second supplemental motion reads. “Both the second and third times that Juror No. 1 prints Dr. Sally Smith’s name, the letter ‘S’ is shaped in a manner identical to the symbol of the Nazi Schutzstaffel.”
The Schutzstaffel, widely known by their initials, SS, was a major Nazi organization with various branches. The SS bears the most responsibility for the systematic slaughter of some 6 million European Jews and millions of other minorities during the Holocaust.
Another exhibit in the filing is an excerpt from a 2021 research document produced by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a nonprofit named after the famed Nazi hunter. This exhibit contains an explanation of the SS logo, which was culled from a collection of pseudo-runes created by an Austrian mysticist in 1906.
“The SS lightning bolts is a symbol often used by neo-Nazis and white supremacists,” the excerpt reads. “The lightning bolts were part of the uniform of Nazi SS soldiers. Often the SS lightning bolts are used to show support for hateful beliefs and ideologies.”
The implication in the filing appears to be that the juror thought the witness was a Nazi or exhibited some kind of Nazi-like attitude.
“Printing the first letter of Dr. Smith’s first and last name in this manner makes clear Juror No. 1’s bias and prejudice against Dr. Smith (and thus Defendant), equating Dr. Smith with a notorious Nazi organization,” the motion continues. “Juror No. 1’s reference to Dr. Sally Smith with the use of Nazi symbolism demonstrates a clear bias, prejudice and prejudgment against her and thus Defendant.”
Earlier efforts by the hospital to win a new trial include allegations that Juror No. 1 shared information about the case with his wife, who then shared the information in online, pro-plaintiff communities. Later, in the hospital’s first supplemental motion for a new trial, their attorneys also argued that Juror No. 1 “may have harbored ill feelings” toward the Florida Department of Children and Families.
Maya, along with her attorney Gregory Anderson, sat down with Law&Crime’s Angenette Levy on Thursday to discuss life after the blockbuster verdict in her family’s favor. The pair rubbished the hospital’s post-trial fight against the verdict and the juror.
“The worst allegations I can possibly imagine against this poor man who did nothing more than give nine weeks of his life to helping the community and his civic function,” Anderson said. “Alleging the most horrific things you can imagine against him and I find it nauseating.”
The girl’s attorney also pointedly referred to the hospital’s latest salvo, the “SS”-themed filing, against Juror No. 1.
“I’ll be very interested to see how Judge [Hunter] Carroll treats this,” Anderson continued. “We’re going to ask them to withdraw it and we’re going to ask it under threat of sanctions and we’ll see what they do.”
In a court order earlier this month, Maya’s attorneys were instructed to respond to the original motion for a new trial by Dec. 11. It is unclear if that schedule, or the obligations on the plaintiffs to respond, will change based on the hospital’s two later-filed supplemental motions.
“I think it’s just absolutely disgusting,” Maya added. “I don’t even know how someone could come up with such a harsh accusation like that. But I am confident in my trial team and I think we’ll be successful.”
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