A Columbus father is taking Nationwide Children’s Hospital to court after his 27-day-old daughter died following a fall from a crib inside one of the hospital’s most intensive care units.
Tyler M. Peyton has filed a civil lawsuit accusing Nationwide Children’s of negligence and willful misconduct in the death of his infant daughter, Ellieana Peyton. The complaint, filed in Franklin County Common Pleas Court on Jan. 23, 2026, says Ellieana fell from a crib in the hospital’s cardiothoracic intensive care unit on March 25, 2025. She had been born with congenital dilated cardiomyopathy and, according to the suit, suffered a skull fracture and traumatic brain injury and was pronounced dead on March 31, 2025.
According to the court filing, a patient care assistant allegedly left one side of Ellieana’s crib rail down while the baby remained attached to monitoring wires. The complaint says those wires were connected to a box the assistant had in a pocket and that when the assistant walked away, the tension on the wires pulled Ellieana over the open side of the crib. She is alleged to have fallen three to four feet to the floor.
The lawsuit describes a “left parietal skull fracture with associated scalp hematoma and extra-axial hemorrhage” and claims there was visible bruising and swelling at the impact site. These details appear in court filings available through the Franklin County Clerk of Courts docket.
A head CT performed the night of the incident showed skull fracture and bleeding, according to the complaint. The filing says Ellieana’s condition worsened over the following days, citing hypotension, falling oxygen saturation and a rising heart rate before she suffered an acute cardiopulmonary collapse and could not be revived. A coroner’s report shared with PEOPLE listed the cause of death as “congenital dilated cardiomyopathy complicated by blunt force head injuries” and recorded the manner of death as accidental.
Allegations in the Lawsuit
The complaint accuses Nationwide Children’s of failing to maintain a safe environment, not implementing adequate fall-prevention measures and not properly monitoring what it describes as a high-risk infant in the Cardiothoracic ICU. The suit says Ellieana had shown enough improvement on testing that she was slated for discharge on or around March 28, 2025, but that the March 25 fall led to irreversible brain injury.
The filing seeks at least $25,000 in damages for negligence and an additional $25,000 for wrongful death, according to court records and reporting by WOSU Public Media.
Coroner Ruling and Hospital Response
The Franklin County Forensic Science Center concluded that Ellieana’s congenital heart condition was complicated by blunt-force head injuries from a fall and listed the manner of death as accidental, according to findings relayed to media outlets. Nationwide Children’s, for its part, has declined to discuss the details of the case, saying it “cannot comment on pending litigation” while the complaint is active, as reported by WHIO.
What the Law Says
Under Ohio law, wrongful-death claims generally must be brought within two years after the person’s death, under Ohio Rev. Code §2125.02. Medical-claim actions, which can include allegations of medical negligence, are governed by Ohio Rev. Code §2305.113, which usually requires a claim to be filed within one year of accrual, subject to certain exceptions.
Those statutory timelines mean the family’s civil case will move through the courts independently of the coroner’s ruling that officially labeled the death accidental. In other words, even an “accident” on the death certificate does not prevent a wrongful-death or medical-negligence claim from being litigated.
Family Remembers Ellieana
The family remembered Ellieana as an alert, smiley baby. Her obituary described her “contagious smile” and bright brown eyes, and funeral services were held in early April 2025 in Zanesville. As the family and community mourned last spring, those same records and filings later became central to the lawsuit now playing out in Franklin County.
The case remains pending in Franklin County Common Pleas Court, where the complaint is on file and awaiting further proceedings. An attorney for Peyton did not immediately respond to requests for comment, and Nationwide Children’s has said it cannot comment on pending litigation, according to WHIO.
