Rare Accomplishment in the NVICP: Family Proves Vaccines Caused Infant Death

The following article is a first in a series discussing premature pediatric death. The authors are alums from the NVICP/CICP class taught by Wayne Rohde. IPAK-Edu.org hosted the online class. Wayne Rohde would like to thank Patrick White, Davoe Price and Tomo Noguchi.

The Sims family is set to receive $250,000 for the statutory death benefit and $50,000 for pain and suffering after filing a petition under the NVICP in 2015. Parents Abigail and Daniel Sims alleged that their 11-week-old daughter died on December 16, 2013, as a result of the routine vaccinations she received earlier that day.

A Breakthrough Ruling

In Sims v. HHS, Special Master Mindy Roth ruled in 2024 that the death of 11-week-old A.E.S. was caused by a vaccine-induced encephalopathy, not an unexplained natural cause. On June 11, 2025, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims denied the government’s motion for review, leaving the judgment in place unless appealed further.

The government has until August 11 to either let the decision stand or appeal to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals. There is a lot riding on their decision. A victory for the Sims family at the Federal Circuit level could set new precedent for many infant death cases to follow. But whether it is appealed further or not, the Special Master’s published ruling presents a roadmap for how to build a winning case in a legal terrain that has proven difficult to navigate.

How the Sims Family Proved Their Case

The petitioner in Sims established entitlement to compensation not by arguing that vaccines caused “SIDS” or an unexplained infant death, but by:

1. Successfully establishing that A.E.S suffered an acute encephalopathy, and

2. Presenting a logically coherent, biologically plausible sequence of events to prove that the vaccines she received were the cause-in-fact of her death less than 8 hours later.

Clinical Observations and Expert Support

The parents described clear behavioral changes in their daughter after the vaccines: she was “super spaced out,” not making eye contact, unusually quiet, and slow to feed—all of which marked a distinct shift from her normal behavior. These observations, while subtle, were central to the case.

Dr. Robert Shuman, a distinguished neuropathologist and child neurologist, provided remarkably effective expert testimony, contending that these clinical symptoms combined with the pathological findings on autopsy provided conclusive evidence that the child was suffering from an acute encephalopathy in the hours following her vaccinations. Based on autopsy findings, including a brain that was both abnormally heavy and physically smooth (indicators consistent with brain swelling and pressure), Dr. Shuman concluded that A.E.S. died from cerebral edema, which resulted in brainstem herniation and cardiopulmonary failure.

Dr. Shuman described a disease process involving a chain reaction of inflammatory and vascular responses that he believes led to the infant’s death. He explained that a vaccine-triggered immune reaction caused widespread third-spacing, which led to cerebral and pulmonary edema and eventually brainstem failure due to herniation. (In other words, the vaccine reaction impaired the structural integrity of the blood vessels, causing fluid to leak into surrounding tissue and resulted in the swelling of the organs that was described in the autopsy findings.) This theory was backed up by Dr. Eric Gershwin, a specialist in immunology, who confirmed the plausibility of this cytokine-mediated action.

Having this kind of exemplary expert testimony from unimpeachable and highly credentialed specialists in the specific field relevant to the petitioner’s theory of causation is the bare minimum of what is necessary to prevail in these infant death cases. The special master usually has to determine key issues by choosing between conflicting subjective interpretations of the agreed-upon facts, and if the government expert is more credentialed in the relevant field then that will conclude the analysis before it begins.

Conflicting Medical Opinions

In this case, the primary issue for Special Master Roth to determine was whether the infant’s post-vaccine behavior and autopsy results constituted sufficient evidence of encephalopathy.

Respondent’s expert, Dr. Christine McCusker, offered the same testimony here that special masters have relied on in past infant death cases to reject claims of encephalopathy. Dr. McCusker stated that “in her years of practice seeing encephalopathic children in the ER, they are not quiet. They are in pain, won’t and can’t eat, are nauseous, and have severe headache and vomiting.” She was adamant that the parent’s description was “not of an encephalopathic baby that would send a parent running to the ER.”

This time, however, her testimony was countered by the equally qualified opinion of Dr. Shuman, who explained that the behavioral changes described by the parents is exactly how babies that age display autonomic impairment: “young infants don’t cry loudly about their distress. They die quietly.”

Special Master Roth ultimately found Dr. Shuman's testimony more persuasive because it aligned with the fact that the infant literally died hours later and experts for both parties acknowledged that cerebral edema was apparent on autopsy. Therefore, she concluded that the petitioner sufficiently proved the occurrence of a Table encephalopathy. The special master further solidified her ruling by concluding the petitioner also met the burden of proving causation-in-fact by satisfying every requirement that has been passed down from the Federal Circuit, citing to the controlling precedent from Althen, Pafford, and Shyface.

Alternative Causes

Once a petitioner establishes a prima-facie case for causation, the burden shifts to the government to show the injury or death was caused by factors unrelated to the vaccine.

The respondent’s neuropathology expert, Dr. Brent Harris, offered nothing to rebut the petitioner’s case. He agreed that the autopsy revealed a cerebral edema, but said he would have concluded the cause of death as “undetermined.” When asked if he could definitively say this death was not caused by the vaccines, he responded: “Yeah, I base my opinion, though, on the medical literature and the fact that the timing of this autopsy or of the vaccination could not have been an anaphylactic reaction. And I’m not aware of any literature to suggest that vaccination other than anaphylaxis could lead to a death like this.” However, “I don’t have an explanation for another diagnosis in this case.”

Dr. McCusker, for her part, did raise the possibility of an obscure genetic condition called Long QT Syndrome, but she conceded it was at best a “plausible” explanation and that genetic studies were not done. Special Master Roth concluded her analysis by reminding that “a plausible or possible theory is insufficient to prove that an injury occurred,” quoting Boatmon.

What Happens Next

The book will not quite be closed on this case until the appeal window lapses, but decisions of Special Masters can only be reversed for an arbitrary and capricious factual finding, a misapplication of law or an abuse of discretion. Given Special Master Roth’s careful application of precedent and well-reasoned factual determinations, along with the belt-and-suspenders reasoning for finding entitlement on both the Petitioner’s Table claim AND the off-Table claim, it would take a lot of creativity to reverse the ruling at this point.

The Bigger Picture

If the judgment stands, the Sims family will receive $300,000 in compensation from the multi-billion-dollar Vaccine Injury Compensation Trust Fund. Their legal battle lasted nearly a decade. Meanwhile, the same fund was used to pay over $428,000 to the petitioner’s attorneys and experts, on top of whatever it cost for the DOJ lawyers and their experts to defend the case.

What a system. So fair and simple. So easy to administer. Just how we drew it up.