Mother Recovers $2.6M in Birth Injury Lawsuit

If you ask lawyers what the most lucrative cases are, they will tell you the same thing. It’s almost always birth injury lawsuits. Birth injury lawsuits are medical malpractice lawsuits involving prenatal care. Successful birth injury lawsuits prove that a negligent doctor, nursing staff, or a hospital did something that was outside the typical standard of neonatal care or failed to do something that was within the prevailing standard of neonatal care.

Injuries that occur during birth often have devastating effects on the child’s quality of life. Since they usually involve the deprivation of oxygen to the child’s brain, the child suffers brain death as a result of the alleged malpractice. The child will probably require 24-hour care for the rest of their life. It is usually the parents who would foot the bill. But when the child’s condition is caused by the negligence of a hospital or doctor, it’s they who pay for the child’s medical expenses.

The $2.6 million verdict mentioned above is just such an example of the type of compensation you see in birth injury lawsuits.

What Happened? 

According to the plaintiff, the fetus was showing signs of growth restriction. The prevailing standard of practice for the profession requires that the doctor find out why the fetus’s growth is restricted. The attending doctor correctly diagnosed the fetus with poor growth but never referred the patient to a specialist.

The doctor testified that he only diagnosed the woman with growth restriction so that he could bill her Medicaid. In other words, it wasn’t medical malpractice, it was fraud. Despite this beautiful argument, the jury saw fit to award the plaintiff with $2.6 million in damages.

The defense argued that the doctor’s intervention would have not prevented the severe birth defects that the baby was born with. No matter what the doctor did, the child would have been born with severe brain damage. Thus, it wasn’t the doctor’s fault. The jury disagreed and awarded the plaintiff with $2.6 million. That money will be placed into a special needs trust for the child’s care.

This Story is a Tragedy

While $2.6 million sounds like a lot of money, the child’s injuries are devastating. According to the plaintiff, the child suffered a brain bleed and has catastrophic brain injuries. His life expectancy is 25 years. The child, who is now 8, cannot walk, talk, or feed himself. Because the child’s quality of life and life expectancy were so reduced, he deserves to be compensated. His medical expenses should not be the burden of his parents, but the doctor who caused the injury.

Talk to a Jacksonville Personal Injury Attorney

If your child was born with severe birth defects, it may not be genetic. Many things can happen in utero that result in severe birth defects. Call the Jacksonville personal injury attorneys at Gillette Law today to schedule a free consultation and discuss your situation in greater detail. We can help.

Resource:

myjournalcourier.com/news/article/Mother-who-sued-doctor-for-child-s-brain-injuries-15763010.php

https://www.gillettelaw.com/lauren-mccluskeys-parents-file-wrongful-death-lawsuit/