The father sobbed as he thought about the hopes he had for his son.
At the age of 15 months, his son Nicholas Alexander "Alex" Clinkscales II passed away due to a button battery that had become stuck in his throat and burned through the tissue.
Last month, the boy's father gave testimony in a case brought against the boy's pediatrician in Columbus, where he claimed she misdiagnosed the boy by failing to suspect a foreign item.
Nicholas Clinkscales said in Muscogee State Court that he had been looking forward to passing on his father's love of baseball to his son.
The father, who formerly had a fantastic arm, explained, "I was in the process of teaching him how to catch," adding, "I could throw a ball through a shower and not get it wet."
Additionally, he had fantasized about teaching the youngster math: "I didn't have somebody to teach me math. That's something I had to work out for myself," he remarked.
He had no idea how or when the little child acquired the button battery; all he knew was that the boy had died in the hospital's emergency room after being taken there for treatment three times and bleeding profusely.
His parents' hopes for their son had been dashed, leaving them inconsolable.
They received $4 million from the jury.
On November 19, 2014, the son of Nicholas and Shameka Clinkscales passed away at the emergency room. A defense expert refuted the lawsuit's assertion that he most likely consumed the coin-sized battery as early as November 1.
In the legal debate, neither side contested the risk that button batteries represent to kids. They are typically swallowed by 3,000 kids annually in the US. According to the pediatric emergency department at Piedmont Columbus Regional, three battery ingestions have been documented in the previous year.
Battery ingestions have increased over a decade, according to a study that was published in the journal Pediatrics in August 2022. It also revealed that 12% of children who swallow batteries had to be transported to the hospital after being taken to the emergency room.
The study revealed that from 2010 to 2019, a child with a battery-related injury visited a U.S. emergency room every 75 minutes on average, which is double the frequency documented in the years 1990 to 2009. Button batteries were implicated in 85% of the incidents.