A jury awarded a family whose child suffered severe brain damage as a result of a birth injury 78.5 million dollars. The injured child now has severe spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy and will require a lifetime of care.
This horrific injury was the result of an 81-minute delay in performance of an emergency cesarean section (i.e. c-section) delivery. The circumstances surrounding this case are shocking since the reason the delivery was delayed for over an hour was because the obstetrician thought the baby was dead. The obstetrician then performed an ultrasound with outdated and poorly maintained equipment provided to him by the hospital. If that wasn’t bad enough, the obstetrician had the nerve to tell the mother that her baby died, then 81 minutes later, the baby “came back to life.”
The damages award in the jury verdict includes payments for future medical care, lost earnings, pain and suffering for the child, as well as emotional distress for the child’s mother, according to Reuters.com.
Our Virginia medical malpractice injury law firm is glad to see some semblance of justice for this family. This was a terrible situation that could have been prevented if the obstetrician acted with due care. Unfortunately, that did not happen and now a child’s life has been changed forever and will need a lifetime of medical care.
We understand how challenging these birth injury medical malpractice cases can be. For example, our firm represented a child who suffered shoulder dystocia, a permanent arm injury during birth. The claim was brought against a nurse-midwife who assisted the child’s mother at birth. A jury determined the nurse’s negligent care was the cause of the child’s arm injury and awarded the family a multi-million dollar verdict.