In 2020, DonQuenick Joppy was an ICU nurse at The Medical Center of Aurora, a Denver-area hospital owned by HCA-HealthOne. A 93-year-old patient in septic shock was on a ventilator when her family decided to withdraw life support. Joppy carried out that order with a respiratory therapist on the phone. The hospital reported the death to police and the state. Joppy was criminally charged.
Prosecutors dropped the case in September 2021. By then she'd already lost her job. She sued HCA-HealthOne, the hospital chain, under the federal civil rights law known as Section 1981 — arguing the company discriminated against her because she is Black, then fired her in retaliation for complaining about it, not over anything to do with how she cared for the patient.
A jury agreed, twice over
In August 2025, after a seven-day trial in federal court in Denver, a jury unanimously found HCA-HealthOne liable on both claims: race discrimination and retaliation. Jurors awarded Joppy $20 million — $5 million in compensatory damages and $15 million in punitive damages. HCA-HealthOne's position, then and now, is that Joppy was fired "because of the actions she took, and those actions alone," and that she acted outside her scope of practice. The jury's verdict did not side with the hospital on that dispute.
The number got smaller. The finding didn't.
On Aug. 14, 2026, U.S. District Judge Charlotte N. Sweeney left the jury's liability findings untouched but ruled that the roughly 3-to-1 ratio between the punitive award and the compensatory damages was "constitutionally excessive." She cut the punitive figure to $2.5 million, bringing the judgment to $7.5 million. Separately, the court ordered HCA-HealthOne to pay just over $2 million in Joppy's attorney's fees and costs. Under the order, Joppy can accept the reduced punitive award or ask for a new trial limited to damages — the finding that the hospital discriminated against her and retaliated against her stands regardless of which she chooses.
Now the hospital is appealing
On Oct. 5, 2026, HCA-HealthOne filed a notice of appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, asking the court to review both the liability verdict and the damages award. The case, No. 1:22-cv-00986 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, is now headed to the appellate court with the jury's findings still in place pending that review.
I've watched this exact pattern play out from the inside more than once: a nurse carries out a family's end-of-life decision, something about the death draws scrutiny, and instead of a root-cause review the hospital hands the file to police. Joppy had to fight a criminal case and her career at the same time, years apart from each other, over a decision that wasn't hers alone to make — a respiratory therapist was on the phone the whole time. A jury believed her. A federal judge mostly agreed. The hospital is still fighting it four years later. That's not a quick story, and it's not supposed to be one you forget about once the headline fades.