The award is the highest ever recorded in the county, according to the New York Jury Verdict Reporter, an East Islip-based research and publishing company that tracks about 80 percent of the awards in the state. It surpassed the $10.7 million awarded in a 1999 personal injury case.

Attorneys for the defendants, Drs. Steven Klein and Ira Spector, did not return repeated calls for comment on their plans for appeal.

But Leon Lazer, a professor at Touro Law Center and a former justice of the Appellate Division, Second Department, predicted the size of the award would be reduced.

"This verdict is extremely high," Lazer said. "I believe it will be reduced by the trial judge and later by an appellate court. It will not stand."

The $80 million award includes $55 million for the lifetime care of the injured patient, Erin Brenner, who is now 12. The remainder is for pain and suffering.

The child's mother, Maureen Brenner, was represented in the case by James R. Duffy, partner in the Uniondale-based law firm Duffy, Duffy & Burdo.

Brenner alleged that Klein and Spector, who have a joint obstetrics practice in Mineola, ignored her warning signs and left her and the hospital staff waiting while she was in serious distress.

In a trial that lasted three weeks, Duffy based his case on two points. He before giving birth, he argued, Brenner had complained about uterine cramps - a signal of premature labor, he said - and should have been put on a regime to monitor her uterine activity. Instead she was told not to worry about it, Duffy alleged.

Duffy also stressed that Brenner had called Dr. Klein at 5:30 on the morning she went into labor and went to Winthrop University Hospital. But Klein, who had a C-section scheduled for another patient at 9:30 a.m., did not arrive at the hospital until 8:45 a.m., the plaintiff alleged.

"In all that time that's lost, they could have been administering drugs to stop the labor and to mature the infant's lungs, so she could breathe on her own," Duffy said.

Instead, Duffy said, the child was born experiencing respiratory distress syndrome and bleeding in the brain.

Spector was represented by William J. Lewis of Melville-based Lewis, Johs, Avallone, Aviles & Kaufman. Klein was represented by Charles Connick, a solo practitioner in Mineola.