O'Connor, who was 19 at the time of the crash, sued three doctors as well as the air ambulance company, the radiology company and the state-run Kona Community Hospital. Her suit alleged doctors misread her chest X-ray, overlooking signs she had a critical injury to her aorta that interrupted blood flow to her extremities.

That alleged error caused doctors to delay transferring O'Connor to The Queen's Medical Center in Honolulu until after she became paralyzed, and that delay aggravated O'Connor's condition to the point where her legs had to be amputated, according to O'Connor's lawyer Richard L. Fried Jr.

The jury disagreed that the doctors were to blame.

"The family is very disappointed," Fried said. "They believe that the jury decided the case based on the testimony of the doctors, not what they wrote in the records when they were treating Karen, and that had they based their decision on the records, the result would have been different."

O'Connor sued Dr. Robert Saito and his employer, Hawaii Radiologic Associates Ltd.; Dr. Steven Alt and his employer, Islands Emergency Medical Service Inc., and Dr. Daryl Kurozawa, the on-call trauma surgeon at Kona hospital.

O'Connor also sued the state and Kona hospital, and Hawai'i Air Ambulance Inc., but the state and the air ambulance company were dismissed from the case before the jury began deliberations.