Seeking Victory for the Vulnerable

For years, teenage female patients at Cumberland Hospital in New Kent, Virginia, told staffers they were sexually abused during intake exams by longtime medical director Dr. Daniel Davidow. Many of the girls had mental health issues related to prior sexual abuse and may not have been believed.

Enter Kevin Biniazan in 2020. After talking to former Cumberland patients and their parents about alleged abuse at the hospital, which is part of the Universal Health Services (UHS) chain of behavioral health facilities, and also with some former Cumberland staffers, he believed them.

“I have vivid memories of sitting in our empty office during the pandemic, talking until the early hours of the morning on Zoom calls with families trying to figure out what was going on,” says Biniazan, 33, a partner at Breit Biniazan, a personal injury firm based in Virginia Beach.

In October 2020, his firm filed a lawsuit against Davidow, Cumberland and UHS on behalf of 20 former patients, alleging such claims as assault and battery, sexual and physical abuse, gross negligence, and falsification of medical records and diagnoses. Later, 26 more plaintiffs were added, many of them also claiming sexual misbehavior, seeking total damages in excess of $930 million. The plaintiffs were at Cumberland between 2008 and 2020, and their ages ranged from 12 to 17 at the time of the alleged abuse.

Last September, after a 15-day trial in Richmond on the first three plaintiffs’ cases, Biniazan and co-lead counsel Lee Floyd, assisted by firm partners Justin Sheldon and Scott Perry, won a $360 million verdict against Cumberland and Davidow, whose employment at the hospital was terminated in 2020. The jury awarded each plaintiff $20 million in compensatory damages, $40 million in punitive damages, and $60 million under the Virginia Consumer Protection Act. The judge dismissed UHS, a publicly traded company, as a defendant, but UHS’ insurance will have to pay the damages if the judgment stands, since Cumberland is a UHS subsidiary.

A doctor’s white coat doesn’t give him the privilege to sexually abuse children with impunity.

That verdict followed a $535 million verdict, later reduced to $180 million plus interest, in March 2024 against The Pavilion Behavioral Health System in Illinois, the subsidiary of a UHS subsidiary. A jury found the residential treatment center negligent in the 2020 rape of a 13-year-old female patient by a 16-year-old male patient. 

Before their trial, Biniazan and Floyd met with the co-lead counsel in that case, Tim Cronin of The Simon Law Firm in St. Louis, to discuss strategy.

“I could tell from talking to them that Kevin and Lee are fantastic lawyers who were working their butts off for their clients,” Cronin says. “I expected them to be extraordinarily prepared, and they were.”

UHS has also faced broader scrutiny. A U.S. Senate Committee on Finance report last May found that children admitted to residential treatment centers operated by UHS and three other companies were subjected to physical, sexual and verbal abuse, unsafe conditions, and failed to receive needed behavioral health care. 

The huge verdicts against UHS-affiliated facilities are a sign that juries are believing children’s testimony about sexual abuse in treatment facilities, says Kathleen Nolan, a senior attorney at Zero Abuse Project, a nonprofit group dedicated to eradicating child abuse. “The Virginia jury is sending a message that there need to be better protections.”

In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing in September, UHS said the Cumberland and Pavilion judgments “may have a material adverse effect” on the company, noting about 40 other plaintiffs have similar cases pending against Cumberland. UHS did not respond to requests for comment for this article.

Floyd describes her partnership with Biniazan as “yin and yang”—with him as the fiery one and herself the careful dealmaker. “Despite countless people telling us we’d never get the case to verdict, Kevin shut out the noise and was so determined to get the victory our clients deserved. He’s brilliant, fearless, and talented well beyond his years.”

Pivotal moments in the trial included Biniazan’s cross-examination of Davidow, in which he questioned representations in the pediatrician’s resume and his description of how he performed femoral exams around his patients’ groins, say Biniazan and Floyd, adding that Davidow admitted to commenting on the attractiveness of his adolescent patients in the medical record.

“It was the final straw,” in the opinion of Floyd, a former defense lawyer who joined Breit Biniazan specifically to work on the Cumberland case.

Now the firm faces a major appellate battle to preserve the verdict, with broader ramifications for Virginia law. They plan to challenge the constitutionality of the state’s $350,000 cap on punitive damages, handling the appeals themselves. Meanwhile, the defense likely will appeal 

the trial judge’s ruling that the plaintiffs’ claims were not barred by the state’s two-year statute of limitations for medical malpractice claims, and ask the judge to cap the punitive damages.

Biniazan argues that the judge’s ruling was correct, saying this wasn’t pleaded as a medical malpractice case. “Acts of child sexual abuse were never contemplated by the legislature to be acts of medical malpractice,” he says. “A doctor’s white coat doesn’t give him the privilege to sexually abuse children with impunity.”

Joseph Farchione, a partner at Wheeler Trigg O’Donnell in Denver who defended Cumberland at trial, says, “We strongly disagree with the verdict and believe there are strong factual and legal arguments that will support our posttrial motions and any subsequent appeal.”

Davidow was acquitted of felony sex abuse charges against two other former Cumberland patients in a criminal trial before a judge in early 2024. 

The next Cumberland civil trial, scheduled for October, involves a teenage female patient allegedly sexually abused by Davidow and raped by a licensed clinical social worker who committed suicide after his criminal indictment. After that, the next trial is set for spring 2026. Floyd says Breit Biniazan will spend millions to litigate the cases over the coming years.

“I don’t know that there will ever be a greater moment in my career than when the jury announced the verdict,” Floyd says. “It was the first time in our clients’ lives that they received a public affirmation that they’d been hurt. We live and breathe this case, and we’re going to do it all the way to the end.”