Cerebral Palsy Case Settles for $4.75 Million
The A.W. Smith Law Firm attained a $4.75 million settlement in a birth injury case earlier in 2010.
*The terms of the settlement required confidentiality regarding the names and all indicators of the defendants, so those details have been removed from this blog.
Plaintiffs John and Jane Doe went to the hospital to have their first child delivered on August 20, 2007. Jane Doe was in labor for 16 hours before finally giving birth. During that time, there were indications that the baby was going through periods of distress. After birth, it was determined that Baby Doe was deprived of oxygen while still in the uterus long enough for him to develop severe cerebral palsy.
Cerebral palsy is a disease that is untreatable and can develop during child birth due to lack of oxygen to the baby's brain. Often, it can be easily prevented by monitoring the fetus's fetal heart rate on a monitor. Due to the amount of time that Baby Doe was deprived of oxygen, he suffers from not only cerebral palsy, but seizures, persistent encephalopathy, diffuse brain atrophy, marked hypotonia in the trunk and lower limbs, and brisk deep tendon reflexes.
The plaintiffs filed a lawsuit against the hospital, the obstetrician (OBGYN), and the birthing center nurse. Plaintiffs claimed that the hospital failed to properly use the fetal monitoring equipment, failed to recognize the signs of Baby Doe's distress, failed to have staff on hand that knew how to address the health problems once they had been realized, and failed to perform an emergency C-section.
The case was settled in early 2010 for $4,750,000.
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