Cases relating to obstetrical malpractice are often the most complex and costly cases a lawyer will handle. Part of the reason is that the injuries are often so catastrophic: a child may be born with cerebral palsy or brain damage that will result in huge care costs for the child’s lifetime. Those care costs can amount to many millions of dollars. And, of course, the impact of a disabled child on the parents can be life-long and devastating to their family.
Many birth-trauma cases involve a delay in offering, or performing, a cesarean section in the face of fetal heart-monitoring or other indications that a fetus is in trouble. Although there are numerous guidelines and articles about this subject, some physicians will persist in trying to deliver a child vaginally even when there are red flags indicating a need to consider a cesarean section delivery.
Other cases will involve a brachial plexus injury (Erb’s palsy) because the baby becomes lodged in the birth canal and the pulling required to get the baby out stretches or even tears the brachial plexus nerve or nerve roots. The result can be a permanent loss of function of the baby’s arm and require extensive surgery to try to ameliorate the damage.
Some obstetrical cases involve a failure to appreciate that a pregnancy is a high-risk one that requires more extensive and intensive monitoring of the pregnancy, or that requires certain actions that may prevent an early birth, such as a cerclage procedure (where the uterus is lax and needs to be sewn in a purse-string fashion) to avoid a too-early delivery. Other cases may involve a failure to realize that the baby is too large to attempt a vaginal delivery. This can occur, for example, when the mother has undiagnosed gestational diabetes, leading to an overly-large baby.
The preparation of an obstetrical case often requires many experts who are retained by the plaintiff’s attorney, including obstetricians, maternal-fetal specialists, pediatric neurologists, and life-care planners. In some cases, the plaintiff will have to retain a dozen or more experts, and the defendants will have an equal amount or more. Because of the high costs and risks of an obstetrical case, a plaintiff’s attorney, before taking it on, will do an intensive and careful evaluation of the facts of the case and the potential for a successful outcome. Pursuing these cases requires a huge amount of time and resources. They are not cases for the inexperienced or the faint-of-heart.
