Dennis and Kimberly Quaid have settled a lawsuit with the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center following the accidental overdose of their twins Thomas Boone and Zoe Grace in 2007.

The couple agreed to a sum of $750,000 “to avoid the time, expense and uncertainty of litigation.” The settlement contains no admission of wrongdoing by the hospital, and only covers damages sustained by Dennis and Kelly.

Thomas and Zoe almost died when, at just 10 days old, they were given 1,000 times the recommended dose of the blood thinning drug Heparin. They visited to hospital to treat routine staph infections at the site of their umbilical cords.

Given their rocky start to life, it’s understandable that Dennis and Kimberly Buffington Quaid want to really celebrate the first birthday of twins Thomas Boone and Zoe Grace. The family will do it in style with a trip to Disneyland!

But Dennis knows that his little ones are probably a little too long to appreciate it.

“We’re going to watch them take a nap in ‘the happiest place on earth,’ and we’ll ride It’s a Small World After Al fifty times, I am sure,” he joked in a recent appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman.

I’m sure they’ll all have fun anyway!

Image used with permission from www.splashnewsonline.com

Here’s a double dose of adorable. Dennis Quaid and his wife Kimberley went walking in Maui on Saturday afternoon. The two precious bundles in the pram are their seven-month-old twins Thomas Boone and Zoe Grace.

Images used with permission from www.splashnewsonline.com

Life’s good for Dennis Quaid, whose four-month-old twins recovered from a near-fatal drug overdose late last year. Dennis and his wife Kimberley are enjoying bonding with the now healthy babies Thomas Boone and Zoe Grace.

“It’s the greatest thing to hold those kids and see their faces because we had a happy ending,” he said at a recent press conference. “It’s great to be a normal dad with the normal problems of not having enough hands for both of them.”

He said the harrowing ordeal has given him a “greater appreciation of life.

“If they hadn’t made it, it really would have changed my life. But they did survive. So it changed my attitude.”

Last week Los Angeles’ Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre was fined $25, 000 for administering an adult dose of the blood thinner Heparin to Dennis’ twins and another newborn. The Quaids have also launched a lawsuit against Baxter Healthcare Corp., the makers of Heparin. They claim the firm should have packaged adult and pediatric doses in clearly labeled vials.

The Quaids are also launching a foundation to help reduce the number of medicinal mistakes. Dennis claims human error “is one of the leading causes of death in our country, [greater] than automobile accidents, breast cancer or AIDS.

“Yet because they happen one case at a time, they tend to slip under the public radar unless you’re a celebrity,” he explained. “Because it happened to my family, it was all over the national news. I realized we have an opportunity to raise public awareness about this.”

I’m just so glad it seems some good can come out of this family’s terrible ordeal. Hopefully they can prevent others suffering the same fate.

Image source: Jurvetson @ Flickr