Birth Injury Attorney

Compensation You Can Recover for Your Child’s Birth Injury

The costs of a birth injury can be substantial, especially if it affects your child long-term. You may be eligible for all those costs and others related to your experience. The compensation a birth injury attorney will fight for may include:

• Medical bills, including emergency treatment, emergency surgery, care in a NICU, and ongoing care costs
• The costs of renovating your home to accommodate your child’s birth injury
• Wages for work you missed while caring for your child
• Pain and suffering

If you lost your baby due to a medical provider’s negligence, a medical malpractice lawyer can help you seek justice.

Why Should You Work With The Goldwater Law Firm on Your Birth Injury Case?

We know that you are likely scared and angry and need support. We treat your family with the empathy and compassion that you deserve. This empathy fuels our drive to help every person injured by medical negligence.

Bob Goldwater and The Goldwater Law Firm have spent decades fighting to protect injured people. Our team refuses to stand by while parents and their injured children are taken advantage of by negligent medical providers and their insurance companies.

We genuinely care about everyone who calls our team looking for help. This is why we only partner with law firms that share our commitment to protecting clients and helping them fight for everything they may qualify for. 

Our law firm partners can help you in every state across the country. Call us today to get started and learn more.

What a Lawyer Can Do for Your Birth Injury Case

You deserve the time and space to focus on your baby, care for them, and get used to your new normal. You can’t do that if you’re also attempting to learn medical malpractice law, identify all liable parties, find (and pay for) an expert witness, and build a compelling case against a medical provider and their (likely formidable) legal team.

Your birth injury attorney can handle the following:

• Gathering evidence
• Reviewing your and your baby’s medical records to determine where negligence occurred
• Link the negligence to your baby’s birth injury
• Identify all parties who may share liability
• Find the right expert witness for your case, likely from our extensive resource pool
• Build your case
• Handle all communication with the involved parties
• Negotiate for a fair settlement
• Manage deadlines
• Take your case to court if that’s the best way to get the compensation you may qualify for

Types of Birth Injuries Medical Negligence Can Cause

Our law firm partners handle all types of birth injury cases, including:

• Shoulder dystocia or a different kind of brachial plexus injury
• Cerebral palsy
• Lacerations
• Vacuum extraction injuries
• Forceps injuries
• Nerve damage
• Fractures
• Hemorrhage

Causes of Birth Injuries

Birth injuries can result from a medical provider’s failure to uphold their industry’s standard of care during the mother’s pregnancy or during or after labor and delivery.

Examples could include:

• A failure to monitor preeclampsia
• A failure to monitor gestational diabetes
• A failure to monitor for signs of fetal distress
• A failure to order a C-section when necessary (e.g., prolonged labor, abnormal fetal position, very large baby, or prolapsed umbilical cord)
• A failure to monitor abnormal fetal position (e.g., breech or transverse)
• Misuse of forceps
• Misuse of a vacuum extraction device
• Hypoxia

Some injuries that occur during birth aren’t preventable. However, if your baby’s injury resulted from a medical provider’s negligent behavior, you can fight for compensation. A personal injury attorney at one of our law firm partners can help.

Who Can Be Liable for a Birth Injury?

Any parties involved in your care or your baby’s care could be liable for a birth injury. Your lawyer can determine whether one or more of these parties share liability:

• An obstetrician who is responsible for prenatal care, labor and delivery, monitoring the mother, postnatal care, and more
• A midwife who is responsible for prenatal and postnatal care, and helping with labor and delivery
• Any member of your labor and delivery team
  • Labor and delivery nurses who are responsible for caring for both mother and baby, monitoring vitals, helping the obstetrician with delivery, and administering prescription medications
  • Anesthesiologists who are responsible for pain management during labor and delivery, and carefully monitoring vital signs
  • Pharmacists who are responsible for dispensing medications safely
  • Any other medical providers who handled the post-delivery care of the baby

If any of these providers failed in their duty to you and your baby and caused injury, your lawyer may be able to hold them liable.

Many people know they can hold an individual medical provider liable for a birth injury. However, not everyone knows you can typically hold a hospital liable as well. Two types of liability may apply in these cases:

• Vicarious liability: Respondeat superior holds that employers are responsible for their employees’ actions taken while on the clock. This means that a hospital (as the medical provider’s employer) can be held liable for any injuries the medical provider causes. 
• Direct liability: Hospitals can also be directly liable if management took certain actions or failed to take specific actions that allowed an injury to occur. This could include negligent hiring, negligent retention (e.g., failing to fire an incompetent or dangerous medical provider), or failing to adequately staff the facility.

Holding a Medical Provider Liable for Birth Injury

A birth injury is not always the result of medical negligence. In some cases, a doctor can do everything right, but an injury still happens. Because of this, a lawyer must establish the following to hold a medical provider liable: 

• There was a doctor-patient relationship. This applies regardless of whether the medical provider is the obstetrician who treated you throughout your pregnancy, a new doctor who delivered your baby, or a member of either of their teams. 
• The medical provider failed to uphold the standard of care. The standard of care is what another medical professional with similar training would do in a similar situation. For example, if a baby is showing signs of fetal distress, there are several options a medical professional has to save the baby. An expert witness could testify that, in that situation, they would have performed an emergency C-section. 
• Their failure caused you or your child harm. Depending on the situation, the harm could include cerebral palsy, shoulder dystocia, brachial plexus injuries, forceps injuries, or another injury or condition.
• You suffered damages, such as medical bills, lost wages, lost earning capacity, and pain and suffering.

Challenges You May Face in a Birth Injury Case

Managing an injury case is difficult enough. Add on being a new parent of a child with a serious injury or condition, and it can feel downright impossible. 

This is especially true as birth injury cases have their own unique challenges that people without legal experience may be unprepared for. Some of these challenges include:

• Proving negligence. Unfortunately, accidents and injuries happen during the birthing process. You must be able to prove that it is a direct result of a medical provider’s negligence and not just an unavoidable part of the process.
• Understanding complex medical jargon. To prove negligence, you must be able to accurately review your and your baby’s medical records. This requires understanding complex medical jargon and being able to identify where something may have gone wrong.
• The requirement for an affidavit of merit. Not all states require this. If your state requires it, a medical professional must attest that you have a valid claim. They must review your case and the other medical provider’s actions to determine whether they would have done anything differently. When handling a birth injury case independently, you would need to find and finance the doctor’s review of your case.
• Determining an accurate value for your case. You are likely too emotionally involved to be able to evaluate your damages and what they are worth correctly.

The attorney we match you with will be able to face these challenges head-on, using their knowledge and experience to establish a robust case on your behalf.