A central Ohio family is accusing one of the country’s best known pediatric centers of failing at the most basic task: keeping a newborn safe in her crib. The father of 27-day-old Ellieana Peyton has filed a medical negligence lawsuit after the baby fell in an intensive care unit and later died, turning what was supposed to be a step toward going home into a wrongful death case.
The complaint, filed by a Zanesville father in Muskingum County Common Pleas Court, argues that Nationwide Children’s Hospital staff ignored clear safety rules and then downplayed the damage until it was too late. At the heart of the case is a simple question with huge implications for families everywhere: how does a child fall from a hospital crib in the ICU in the first place.
The fall that changed everything
According to the lawsuit, Ellieana Peyton had been in the ICU at Nationwide Children almost from birth because of a serious heart condition. Her father says that by late March she was stable enough that staff were talking about moving her out of intensive care, a moment most parents of medically fragile babies cling to as a sign that the worst might be behind them. Instead, the complaint says a hospital assistant left the rail on her crib down while connected monitoring cords ran from Ellieana’s tiny body to a device in the assistant’s pocket, setting up a hazard that should never exist in a critical care unit.
Court records describe how the baby fell from the crib in that ICU room, with the cords that were supposed to be tracking her vital signs instead becoming part of the chain of events that led to her injuries. The assistant, according to the filing, had the monitoring box in a pocket while the cords stayed attached to Ellieana, a setup detailed in a report on the ICU crib fall. The hospital has not publicly laid out its own blow‑by‑blow account of the moment of impact, but the father’s lawsuit frames the fall as entirely preventable, the result of basic safety steps being skipped in a unit that treats the most fragile patients.
A fragile heart and a devastating brain injury
Ellieana was not a healthy full‑term newborn who suddenly encountered danger. She had been admitted to the Hospital ICU shortly after birth with a congenital heart defect that limited her heart’s ability to pump effectively. That condition meant any additional trauma carried extra risk, something the complaint leans on heavily. After the fall, doctors documented a traumatic brain injury layered on top of her pre‑existing cardiomyopathy, a combination that, according to the lawsuit, put her at “significant risk” of not being able to generate effective cardiac output.
A brain scan performed after the incident showed damage that the complaint describes as “irreversible,” a detail echoed in coverage of the medical negligence claim. Over the next several days, her condition spiraled. Reports say Ellieana suffered acute cardiopulmonary collapse and required aggressive intervention, including resuscitation efforts described in filings summarized by Ellieana’s condition. The Franklin County Coroner later concluded that the 27‑day‑old died at 7:50 p.m., with the fall and her underlying heart disease both part of the story.
Inside the lawsuit: what the father says went wrong
The Zanesville Father is not just alleging a freak accident. His complaint in Muskingum County lays out a series of claimed failures by Nationwide Children, starting with the decision to leave the crib rail down while a staff member was distracted. The filing argues that hospital policies require rails to be up whenever a baby is unattended, and that the assistant’s choice to keep the monitor box in a pocket while cords tethered Ellieana to the crib created a trip line between the child and the adult. In the father’s telling, this was not a split‑second misstep but a setup that violated basic pediatric safety standards.
Beyond the moment of the fall, the lawsuit accuses the hospital of failing to fully appreciate or communicate the severity of the head trauma in those first critical hours. The father’s attorneys say the team did not immediately order the imaging and neurological consults that a traumatic brain injury in such a young infant should trigger, a claim reflected in summaries of the filed lawsuit. The complaint also points to gaps in monitoring after the fall, arguing that staff should have anticipated how a brain injury could interact with Ellieana’s fragile heart and adjusted her care plan accordingly. In short, the father is telling the court that the hospital failed his daughter twice, first by letting her fall and then by not responding aggressively enough once she was hurt.
How the hospital and community are responding
Nationwide Children’s Hospital, a sprawling pediatric campus in Columbus that draws families from across the Midwest, has not publicly walked through every allegation line by line. In earlier reporting on the incident, the hospital acknowledged that an accident occurred in one of its units and that it had reviewed what happened, but it has not detailed any disciplinary action or policy changes tied directly to the accident in the. Large children’s hospitals typically treat falls as “never events,” meaning they are considered so preventable that any occurrence triggers an internal investigation and, often, quiet but significant changes to equipment or staffing.
In central Ohio, the case has landed in a community that is used to seeing Nationwide Children’s name attached to expansion projects, research breakthroughs, and even lighter stories like a National beach‑themed cafe opening in nearby Clintonville. The lawsuit has shifted that conversation, at least for now, toward uncomfortable questions about whether even top‑tier pediatric centers can fall into autopilot on routine safety checks. For families who have spent nights in ICU rooms watching monitors flicker, the idea that a baby could fall from a crib while hooked to life‑saving equipment hits close to home.
What this case could mean for hospital safety
Legally, the father’s claim is a straightforward medical negligence and wrongful death suit, but the ripple effects could stretch well beyond one Muskingum County docket. If a jury finds that staff behavior in the ICU fell below the standard of care, it could push hospitals to revisit how they train assistants, nurses, and techs on the basics of crib safety, especially when cords and portable monitors are involved. The complaint has already drawn attention to the way monitoring devices are used, with descriptions of cords running from Ellieana to a box in a pocket that echo broader concerns about how modern equipment can create new risks, a point that shows up in coverage of the central Ohio father and his claims.
For families, the case is a reminder to ask blunt questions even in the most intimidating medical settings. Parents of ICU babies are often told not to touch equipment or adjust rails, but they can still insist that rails stay up, that cords are routed safely, and that any fall, no matter how minor it looks, triggers immediate imaging and close observation. Advocates say that kind of vigilance should not be necessary in a place built for children, yet stories like Ellieana’s keep surfacing, from Zanesville to other communities cataloged in broader hospital safety discussions. As the Father from Zanesville presses his case in COLUMBUS and Muskingum County, his daughter’s short life is now part of a larger fight over how safe “safe enough” really is inside the walls of a children’s hospital.
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