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When a medical professional makes mistakes during pregnancy or childbirth, the consequences can be lasting and devastating. Justia provides a free resource that explains how parents can hold healthcare providers accountable.
The process of pregnancy and childbirth may be both exciting and nerve-wracking for parents. It’s much safer than it used to be, but there’s still a risk that something could go wrong. Unfortunately, one way in which something could go wrong involves mistakes or oversights by healthcare providers. These errors sometimes result in serious injuries to the child, which may affect the rest of their life. Families facing this challenging situation may want to seek compensation from a healthcare provider that was at fault. The Birth Injuries Legal Center in the Justia Legal Guides helps explain their options while describing some related medical concepts. Here are some answers that it provides to questions that parents might raise.
What Do You Need To Prove in a Birth Injury Lawsuit?
Birth injury lawsuits usually involve negligence claims. This tends to require proving four elements. First, the healthcare provider must have needed to meet a certain standard of care, which is specific to their medical field. Parents also must show that the healthcare provider didn’t meet this standard, their failure to meet the standard caused a birth injury, and damages resulted. You only need to prove each of these elements by the preponderance of the evidence, which means that they’re more likely than not to be true.
What Types of Damages Are Available for Birth Injuries?
Most damages in birth injury cases fall into a category called compensatory damages. This means that they’re meant to put the child and family as close as possible to the position where they would have been if the injury hadn’t happened. (Of course, this isn’t actually possible; it’s just the reasoning behind these damages.) Compensatory damages are divided into economic and non-economic damages. Economic damages cover medical bills, assistive devices, home modifications, and other tangible financial costs. Non-economic damages include pain and suffering, lost enjoyment of life, and other intangible forms of harm. If the defendant did something especially blameworthy, punitive damages might be awarded as well as compensatory damages, but these aren’t typical.
How Does an Expert Witness Help Prove a Claim?
Jurors and judges generally aren’t familiar with the medical profession. In most cases, they wouldn’t be able to figure out on their own whether a healthcare provider was negligent. Medical expert witnesses play a key role in establishing the standard of care that applied to a healthcare provider in a certain situation. They can also explain how the defendant fell short of that standard and how their error caused the injury. In addition, medical experts might describe the prognosis for the child, which could help prove their damages. Other types of experts might testify to support certain forms of damages, such as economics experts discussing lost earning capacity.
Why Are Affidavits of Merit Required in Birth Injury Cases?
Many states require affidavits of merit out of concern that healthcare providers would face lawsuits that lack a valid basis if this screening requirement didn’t exist. Frivolous lawsuits could increase the costs of malpractice insurance, which are passed down to consumers. The downside is that getting an affidavit of merit makes it more expensive and complicated to bring a birth injury or other medical malpractice lawsuit. It might discourage some people who have valid claims.
What’s the Statute of Limitations in a Birth Injury Case?
The statute of limitations is a deadline for bringing a lawsuit. If you miss this deadline, the defendant generally can get the case dismissed, regardless of whether it has merit. However, there’s often a “discovery rule” that adjusts the statute of limitations when an injury wasn’t immediately obvious. Injuries to children, such as birth injuries, also may trigger a distinctive statute of limitations that diverges from the usual deadline in personal injury or medical malpractice cases.
How Do I Find a Lawyer for My Birth Injury Case?
You should work with an attorney who is experienced in birth injury lawsuits. This is a very distinctive area of law with which not all personal injury lawyers, or even all medical malpractice lawyers, are familiar. You should check an attorney’s disciplinary record with your state bar association to make sure that it’s reasonably free from ethical violations. Scan the verdicts and settlements posted on an attorney’s website to get a sense of their track record. Reviews from former clients and other attorneys can offer insights into their personality and their reputation in the legal community. You can also use the free initial consultation offered by most medical malpractice lawyers to see how well you relate to an attorney and whether you feel comfortable trusting them.
How Can a Life Care Plan Help Parents?
A life care plan can help calculate the costs of treatments, equipment, home modifications, and other steps needed to deal with the long-term effects of a disability caused by a birth injury. This allows families to plan ahead for how they will manage the financial burden. Sometimes a life care plan also may outline milestones that a child with a developmental disability should reach. Missing these milestones might warrant adjustments to the plan. In a birth injury lawsuit, the estimates of costs and losses provided by a life care plan can help quantify the damages that the defendant needs to pay.
How Is Cerebral Palsy Treated?
A child who develops cerebral palsy may receive physical, occupational, and speech therapy. Sometimes they may benefit from less conventional forms of therapy as well, such as behavioral or massage therapy. A child also may get certain medications to alleviate their symptoms and address any secondary conditions resulting from the cerebral palsy. In some cases, a doctor might suggest that a child have surgery, such as a procedure to resolve a bone or joint deformity. Cerebral palsy treatments can be expensive, but their costs can be covered through a birth injury lawsuit.
How Do Brain Injuries Happen During Childbirth?
Some brain injuries result from oxygen deprivation when complications arise during labor or delivery. Infections transmitted from the mother also may cause brain injuries, such as when Group B strep in the mother leads to meningitis in the child. Pressure to the head as the baby travels through the birth canal may harm their brain as well. Sometimes this happens when a healthcare provider fails to properly assist with the delivery. These types of brain injuries may be more likely to affect only part of the brain, while oxygen deprivation and infections may be more likely to affect the brain as a whole.
What Are Some Complications of a Premature Birth?
A baby born prematurely (before 37 weeks of pregnancy) may develop complications related to their breathing, such as pauses in breathing or respiratory distress syndrome. Other complications may involve their blood, such as jaundice or a type of severe bleeding in the brain known as an intraventricular hemorrhage. A premature baby also may be more likely to develop infections because their immune system is weaker. Certain other conditions may affect their vision or intestines. Healthcare providers should be aware of the potential complications and monitor a premature baby carefully.
Final Thoughts
A preventable birth injury can place a heavy burden on a child and their parents. While there’s no way to completely undo the harm, getting compensation can help ease financial strain and provide closure. If you’re considering legal action, you should consult a medical malpractice lawyer near you. They can evaluate your situation and explain your options. In the meantime, the Birth Injuries Legal Center offers a readable overview of some key concepts in this area. Like the other Justia Legal Guides, it furthers our mission of making the law free and accessible to all.
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