Operational claim: son recovered 10 million rubles from the clinic for the death of his mother

St. Petersburg businessman Sergei Stikharev has obtained 10 million rubles in compensation through the court for the death of his mother, who fell into a coma after a medical error and died in a private clinic near Moscow. In addition, the medical institution was ordered to return to the plaintiff more than 1.5 million rubles spent on treatment. This payment has become one of the largest compensations for moral damage in cases of medical errors in Russia. During the proceedings, the Ilyinskaya Hospital itself, where the woman died, tried to recover about 25 million rubles from the entrepreneur for the services provided, but the court refused to satisfy these requirements. How the plaintiff managed to achieve a decision on compensation and whether the clinic will be able to challenge the amount of the payment is described in the Izvestia article.

What was the compensation awarded for?

The Kirov court of St. Petersburg ordered the Ilyinskaya Hospital private clinic near Moscow to pay 10 million rubles as compensation for moral damage to Sergei Stikharev, the son of a patient who died there, according to the decision (Izvestia has an audio recording of the meeting). In addition, the hospital is obliged to return to the plaintiff more than 1.5 million rubles, which he paid under the service agreement.

Sergei Stikharev filed a consumer protection lawsuit, insisting that his mother was poorly provided with medical services. In 2023, the woman fell into a coma after an operation performed at the clinic, and a year later, without regaining consciousness, she died.

In December 2025, the Krasnogorsk City Court of First Instance found oncologist Alexei Ilyukhov, who performed the procedure, guilty of causing death by negligence and sentenced him to two years of restriction of freedom with a ban on practicing medicine for a period of one year. They also collected a million rubles from the oncologist in favor of the deceased's spouse. But at the appeal stage, the case was dismissed due to the expiration of the statute of limitations.

Interestingly, Ilyinskaya Hospital filed a counterclaim during the consideration of the civil case, demanding to recover 25 million rubles from Sergei Stikharev. As the clinic insisted, this amount was spent on treating the woman while she was in a coma. However, the court rejected the claim in full.

The case of the Ilyinskaya Hospital

In May 2022, Irina Stikhareva signed an agreement with Ilyinskaya Hospital. A 68-year-old woman was diagnosed with cancer, and six months later she went to the hospital due to respiratory failure. The day after his hospitalization, on November 30, 2023, the attending physician performed an operation to evacuate fluid from the pleural cavity (the narrow space between the lung and the inner wall of the chest) — thoracocentesis. After that, Irina Stikhareva's condition deteriorated sharply, and she fell into a coma — this follows from the text of the verdict to the oncologist (available to Izvestia). After a year in a coma, on November 28, 2024, the patient died.

The examination showed that the accused had damaged the intercostal artery of the victim during the operation. This led to acute massive bleeding into the right pleural cavity and irreversible anoxic brain damage — damage to its tissues due to lack of oxygen.

The doctor did not admit his guilt. He stated that Irina Stikhareva had been suffering from metastatic basal cell carcinoma since 2004 (a rare form of skin cancer in which the tumor not only grew at its origin, but also spread to other parts of the body). According to him, after the thoracocentesis, the woman was in a stable condition. However, on the same day she complained of pain, her condition worsened, and her heart stopped. After resuscitation, the doctors performed another operation, during which they found that the patient was bleeding.

"[The Doctor] believes that the bleeding was caused by a rib fracture during resuscitation, in addition, there is a metastasis at the fracture site on the rib. The error that he is charged with, namely, conducting thoracocentesis through access to the tenth intercostal space, is excluded. I.V. Stikhareva's death was caused by a chronic oncological disease a year after the procedure and has nothing to do with the manipulation performed by him," the court said in its materials.

However, the spouse of the deceased stated at the meeting that he had been in touch with his wife after hospitalization, and she felt fine — but it was after the operation that she became much worse, and the doctors left the woman without supervision for an hour and a half.

"It was detected a few minutes before losing consciousness and cardiac arrest. Doctors recorded a triple cardiac arrest. She was taken to the intensive care unit, where cardiac and respiratory activity was restored, but as a result of acute blood loss, her brain and kidneys were damaged," the testimony of the deceased's spouse is described in the verdict.

The editorial board contacted Ilyinskaya Hospital for comment, but had not received a response at the time of publication.

Compensation may be reduced

The amount of compensation collected has become one of the largest in the practice of Russian courts, lawyer and legal adviser to the plaintiff, medical lawyer, Candidate of Medical Sciences Alexey Goryainov told Izvestia.

— The established direct causal relationship between the actions of the doctor and the death of the patient made it possible to initiate a criminal case and bring it to a verdict. The same connection <...> fully determined the amount of compensation awarded," he noted. — This case will be an important lesson for private clinics. There is no place for soulless money-making in medicine.

Ekaterina Baturina, a lawyer and medical lawyer, agrees with the amount of compensation.

—If the court has set such an amount, it means that during the consideration of the case significant violations of the law, as well as treatment recommendations, were revealed, which could be associated with irreversible consequences for the patient," the expert noted.

However, more often than not, payments for moral damages turn out to be less. According to Irina Gritsenko, a lawyer in the field of medical law, up to 5 million rubles.

— The amount of 10 million rubles was determined by the court of first instance. But surely the clinic will appeal. Most likely, the amount will be reduced," the lawyer believes.

Irina Hrytsenko noted that such incidents had already occurred. So, a few years ago in Moscow, in a case of improper medical care, the injured party was awarded compensation in the amount of 20 million rubles, but on appeal the amount was reduced to 3 million.

— If the clinic does not want to disclose information about the incident, then at the pre—trial stage you can get more compensation than if you go to court, - said the lawyer.

However, the courts of appeal do not always reduce the amount of compensation. So, in 2014, in St. Petersburg, the court decided to pay 15 million rubles to the mother for the death of a young child. As it turned out, during childbirth, the doctors made a mistake, which then led to irreversible damage to the baby's brain, and two years later he died. The clinic filed an appeal, but the court still fully satisfied the mother's demands.