Nichelle Nichols Family Wins $13 Million Verdict in Death Case
A Silver City jury awarded nichelle nichols' family a $13 million verdict on Thursday in a medical malpractice case over her 2022 death. The award came after an eight-day trial in 6th Judicial District Court before Judge Jim Foy.
Gila Regional Medical Center Case
Theresa Hacsi, an attorney for the family, said, "Miss Nichols came to the hospital for help" and later added, "She was having a heart attack that was missed. It was a very chaotic environment and what services were available and what services were not available was chaos." The family’s suit said employees at Gila Regional Medical Center failed to diagnose and treat symptoms of acute heart failure, then sent Nichols home to an assisted living center, where she died hours later on July 30, 2022.
The case places Grant County’s hospital under a jury finding of negligence, but the money at stake is sharply smaller than the verdict suggests. Under New Mexico’s Tort Claims Act, the family can collect only up to $400,000 from the award returned against the county-owned hospital.
HealthTech Management Service Trial
A second lawsuit remains pending against HealthTech Management Service, the Oregon-based for-profit company that operated the hospital under contract with Grant County when Nichols died. That case was filed in 1st Judicial District Court in Santa Fe and is set for trial later this year.
The verdict is significant because it gives Nichols’ family a court finding against the hospital itself, but the practical recovery is capped at a fraction of the jury’s number. For the family, the next real test is whether the separate case against HealthTech produces a different financial outcome.
Nichelle Nichols on Screen
Nichols appeared in 67 of the 78 episodes of the original Star Trek, which aired from 1966 to 1969, and later appeared in six big-screen spin-offs from 1979 to 1991. She portrayed Lt. Nyota Uhura on the bridge of the starship Enterprise, and her role put her among the first Black women to hold a leading role in a network television series.
One November 1968 episode, Plato’s Stepchildren, included a kiss between Nichols’ character and Capt. James Kirk, played by William Shatner, and aired one year after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Virginia law banning interracial marriage. Near the end of the first season, Nichols planned to leave for Broadway before Martin Luther King Jr. asked her to stay, calling her a "vital role model."
