Medical Malpractice
If your child has a severe birth injury, your life is a whole lot harder. Our Maryland birth injury lawyers see this up close. It is a terrible thing to happen. It is unfair any way you look at it.
But you did not come here looking for sympathy. You came here because you are trying to figure out how to give your child the best life possible, and you understand that the settlement payouts in birth injury cases can be life-changing.
This page is about:
- How birth injury malpractice lawsuits work in Maryland,
- The types of typical birth injury lawsuits that are successful, and
- Expected settlement amounts and jury payouts in birth injury lawsuits in Maryland based on the type of claim
Why Maryland Birth Injury Settlements and Verdicts Really Matter
The reality is that millions of dollars in a settlement amount or jury payout can improve a tough situation. It makes it easier to care for your child and give them the very best. Studies show the best care leads to better outcomes. Just as importantly, it can give your child the money needed for lifelong care even after you are gone.
The reason these cases sometimes result in extremely large settlements and verdicts in the tens of millions of dollars is apparent. The injuries in permanent brain damage cases are catastrophic (and there is no cap on economic damages in Maryland).
Sadly, some families have no option for monetary help. This is because their child’s birth injury was not due to a medical error (or they never suspect malpractice was the cause). But when the harm was caused by a medical mistake, there is the possibility for a great deal of compensation.
Our lawyers handle birth injury claims. Our legal team is based in Baltimore, Maryland. But our attorneys handle these personal injury cases throughout the entire United States.
There are complicated statute of limitations issues involving children. So while you may want to put off hiring a birth injury attorney, you should not put off talking to one to get legal advice on your deadline to sue because of statute of limitations issues you may face.
What our birth injury lawyers can do for you is figure out whether you have a claim and what your options are moving forward. We can also talk honestly about what has been holding you back from making a claim and what your concerns might be.
This page is to provide you with information on birth injury lawsuits in Maryland. But it is also a job interview. If your child has suffered an injury during labor and delivery, our birth injury lawyers want to help you. Call our birth injury attorneys at 800-553-8082 or get more information about your case online.
- A closer look at the settlement value of birth injury cases
- Birth injury questions frequently asked by parents
- Financial help for parents in the Baltimore-Washington Area
Cerebral Palsy
This umbrella term refers to a group of related disorders in which the brain is not able to control the normal movement and coordination of the muscles in the body. Cerebral palsy is caused by damage to the developing brain during pregnancy or childbirth. Cerebral palsy can happen in the absence of a doctor’s medical negligence. But far too often, CP is caused by mistakes or medical negligence during delivery.
HIE (Hypoxic-Ischemic Encephalopathy)
HIE is a highly harmful and potentially fatal neurologic birth injury. HIE is caused by complications or trauma during the delivery process, which results in a significant interruption of blood and oxygen supply.
When a baby may not be getting enough oxygen, it is an obstetrical emergency that often requires immediate delivery of the child. Otherwise, oxygen deprivation may trigger permanent damage to brain cells, often leading to cerebral palsy, damage to the white matter in the child’s brain, or other birth injuries.
Failure to Order a Caesarian Section
There are cases where a C-section becomes medically necessary. Courts have sometimes ordered women to get a C-section against their wishes.
So clearly there are cases such as when the baby’s heart rate drops dramatically, the cord is wrapped around the baby’s neck, or there is a placental abruption where healthcare providers need to step in and recommend immediate surgical delivery. Any meaningful delay can lead to a lack of oxygen to the brain and other vital organs that can change the child’s life forever.
Forceps Errors
Sometimes, forceps are needed when the birth is not progressing as it should, often because the child is awkwardly positioned in the mother’s womb. Good doctors use this tool to assist the baby through the birth canal in the delivery process all of the time.
But this tool has to be used with great care. The use of both forceps and a vacuum is correlated with a greater risk of a birth injury. What kind of injury? The risk is usually oxygen deprivation, and brain bleeds that can lead to cerebral palsy and other birth injuries. Too many doctors today do not know how to use forceps in a way to avoid injury to the mother or child.
Ignoring Fetal Heart Monitor
The fetal heart monitor issue returns to the same place as most of these other errors: hypoxia. Oxygen to the brain is critical for the fetus at this stage of life. The medical literature is clear that certain electronic fetal monitoring patterns are suggestive of metabolic acidosis and brain damage. If there is something awry with the fetal heart rate and the medical professionals do not take action, it can lead to brain damage, cerebral palsy, and a host of other problems.
Failure to Detect Prolapsed Umbilical Cord
This is when the umbilical cord is wrapped around the infant’s neck or head which can stop the flow of blood and oxygen t
o the brain. The problems here are a failure to detect the problem and failing to perform a C-section quickly to protect the child.
When cord prolapse is suspected, an emergency Cesarean section is usually warranted, and manual attempts to relieve umbilical cord compression must be undertaken.
Vacuum Errors
Malpractice cases involving vacuum errors are similar to forceps errors. When there is a little trouble getting the child out of the womb, doctors should be concerned. But they can’t panic. A vacuum is a fine tool but, like any tool, it has to be used properly. Too many delivering doctors either do not know how to use it or misuse it in the heat of the moment. If it is used improperly or the vacuum extractor itself is defective, it can cause severe birth injuries or death to the newborn child.
Erb’s Palsy
This common birth injury leaves children with full or partial paralysis in one arm. Erb’s palsy results from damage to the brachial plexus nerves in the shoulder, which control the movement of the arm.
These essential nerves frequently get injured from stretching and tearing during a difficult vaginal delivery. The critical thing for obstetricians when there is trouble with delivery is to avoid excessive fundal pressure or perform a C-section.
What Are My Chances of Winning a Birth Injury Lawsuit in Maryland?
If you have a potential birth injury claim, you want to know if you will win and how much money you will get if you take legal action. Let’s start with the statistics. Nationally, plaintiffs win approximately 29% of birth injury cases at trial. Maryland, based on our birth injury lawyers’ experiences and looking to follow the verdicts in these cases, is probably higher. These statistics are also much higher in Baltimore in Prince George’s County than in the rest of Maryland.
This might sound like a low number, but, statistically, it has a high relative success rate. Only 21% of verdicts in all medical malpractice cases nationally end in a plaintiffs’ verdict.
What does this tell us about your case? Nothing. Because what is not included in these statistics is how many viable delivery error cases reach an out-of-court settlement. There is no statistical data on this. But the answer is a lot. Ultimately, most birth injury healthcare provider negligence claims that go to trial are complex cases for the plaintiff because the evidence is not there.
There is a lot on the line in these cases. This usually leads the doctor, hospital, or insurance company to offer a fair settlement amount to settle birth injury lawsuits before trial. So if you have a good labor and delivery case, it is unlikely that you will ever see the inside of a courtroom.
How Long Can I Wait Before Filing a Birth Injury Lawsuit?
Our law firm handles birth injury cases all over the country. The statute of limitations in birth injury cases varies. It is usually different for parents and their claims than for the child’s. In most states, the statute of limitations on birth injury malpractice lawsuits is two or three years from the date the birth injury is discovered for the parents but the deadline is longer for the child.
Maryland birth injury law is more generous with children. In Maryland, the statute of limitations allows the child to bring a claim anytime before the child is 21 in most cases. But parents have over three years to make a claim (although there are exceptions to this rule and questions about how a court would interpret this law)
How Do I Know If My Baby’s Birth Injury Was Caused By Malpractice?
When you find out your baby has suffered a birth injury, there is no immediate way of knowing whether it was caused by medical negligence. The doctors are not going to admit that they made a mistake.
A high percentage of birth injuries are directly linked to some type of medical negligence. If you suspect your child’s birth injury may have been avoidable, consult a Maryland birth injury attorney. For most parents, this is the only path to discovering what happened to their child.
What Are The Most Common Types of Birth Injury Malpractice?
Medical malpractice resulting in a birth injury can occur in an infinite number of ways, but there are specific categories of medical negligence that result in birth injuries:
- C-Section Malpractice: failure to perform or unreasonable delay in C-section
- Forceps Malpractice: unskilled or negligent use of obstetrics forceps during delivery.
- Failure to Monitor: failure to watch fetal monitoring devices for signs that the baby is under stress.
- Vacuum Extraction Malpractice: unskilled or negligent use of a vacuum pump extractor to deliver the baby.
Birth Injury Stories and Their Litigation Outcomes
The settlement amounts in individual birth injury cases in Maryland can be challenging to ascertain until a lawsuit has been filed and discovery has been completed. Naturally, parents want to know what kind of financial compensation their child and their family can expect if their child has a permanent disability.
Below our birth injury attorneys have gathered plaintiffs’ verdicts and settlements in specific types of birth injury cases. This will not help you ascertain the exact monetary value of your child’s claim, but it does give you a better idea of the potential ranges for successful claims.
- Brachial plexus
- Bradycardia and fetal distress
- Brain Bleeds
- Brain Ischemia
- Caput succedaneum
- Cephalopelvic disproportion
- Cerebral palsy
- Erb’s palsy
- Fetal macrosomia
- Forceps errors
- Herpes encephalitis
- Hypoglycemia
- Hypotonia
- Intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR or FGR)
- Kernicterus
- HIE
- Meconium
- Periventricular leukomalacia (PVL)
- Pitocin misuse
- Placental abruption
- Preeclampsia
- Uterine rupture
Birth Injury Frequently Asked Questions
If you suspect that your child’s birth injury may have been the result of a mistake by the doctors, you will need to make a decision about whether to pursue legal action. Below are a number of frequently asked questions about birth injury lawsuits.
What Is the Difference Between Birth Injuries and Birth Defects?
Birth defects are conditions that your baby inherits through genetics. A birth injury is a condition that is caused by something that happens during labor and delivery that causes trauma to the baby. From a birth injury litigation standpoint, you cannot sue for birth defects. But you often can sue for birth injuries during pregnancy or labor and delivery.
How Do I Know If My Baby’s Birth Injury Was Caused by Medical Negligence?
This can often be a difficult question to answer. Don’t expect the doctors or hospital staff to come forward and say, “Sorry, but we made a mistake and may have injured your baby during delivery.” That is very rarely going to happen. In fact, sometimes you might take your baby home from the hospital without even realizing that an injury occurred during delivery. It might take weeks or months before the signs of the injury and resulting condition become apparent.
In any event, once you know for sure that your baby was injured during delivery you still probably won’t be sure if the doctors or staff are at fault. The reality is that in most cases you will need to take the first step towards a birth injury lawsuit before you actually know for sure if medical negligence occurred.
If you reasonably suspect that the doctors made a mistake or were negligent in anyway, you should go ahead and consult with a birth injury attorney. A birth injury lawyer can investigate your case and help determine whether medical negligence may have occurred. The consultation won’t cost you anything one way or the other.
How Long Can I Wait Before Deciding to Take Legal Action for a Birth Injury?
Once you suspect that you child’s birth injury may have been caused by medical negligence, the clock starts running on your deadline to file a lawsuit. Every state has a statute of limitations which requires lawsuits for birth injuries (and other malpractice cases) to be filed within a certain time frame.
In most states, the limitation period for filing medical malpractice cases is either 2 years or 3 years. The period typically starts to run when you know or should reasonably know that you may have a claim for malpractice that would trigger further investigation. Most typically, this is the date the child is born.
The exact date when the statute of limitations period begins can be a complex legal issue so you should consult with an attorney before making any assumptions. If you don’t file your medical malpractice claim before the limitation period expires, you will be legally barred from filing it.
You may have been told or heard that you have additional time to file on behalf of a minor. But the parents also have claims in birth injury cases and their statute of limitations may be much shorter.
What Is the First Step in a Birth Injury Lawsuit?
If you are seriously thinking about a birth injury lawsuit, your first step in that process should always be a consultation with a birth injury attorney. An experienced birth injury attorney can tell you whether or not you might have a valid case. Then your attorney can collect and review all of the required medical records and send them out to an expert witness (another doctor) for a formal opinion.
How Long Do Birth Injury Lawsuits Take?
Not surprisingly, there is no universal answer to this question because it all depends on the circumstances of your individual case and how things play out. Some cases might settle very quickly, before a lawsuit is even filed. The time frame for these type of quick settlement cases can be as short as 4-8 months. If your case does not settle right away your birth injury lawyers will file a lawsuit in court. Once a case gets to that point it probably will not settle until after the process of pre-trial discovery. Depending on the complexity of the case the discovery phase can last anywhere from 6 months to over a year. If the case actually goes to trial it could easily take another year before the trial gets scheduled and completed.
Can I Sue for Emotional Distress in a Birth Injury Case?
In many birth injury cases, the emotional impact on parents can be profound. If you or your spouse has suffered significant emotional distress due to a birth injury to your child, you may be eligible to sue for emotional damages. This can include compensation for mental anguish, depression, and anxiety resulting from the traumatic experience of a birth injury.
The rules for such claims vary by state, so it’s essential to discuss your specific situation with a qualified birth injury attorney who can advise you based on your jurisdiction. The one thing that families sometimes find it hard to understand is that that best way to focus on maximizing the settlement amount of a birth injury lawsuit is to put the focus on the future costs, which can quickly come to tens of million of dollars. Juries are more eager to award these damages than the awful emotional suffering of the parent and the child. It does not mean you do not make these claims. We are talking about the focus for settlement and, if necessary, at trial.
Contacting a Maryland Birth Injury Lawyer
Birth injuries are not always the result of a medical mistake. Sometimes, bad things happen to good people. But, sometimes, far too often, a healthcare provider’s mistake causes severe injuries to the newborn.
The stakes in childbirth injury cases are incredibly high. There is no damage cap on the recoverable economic damages for past and future medical bills and the cost of maintaining the child for the remainder of the child’s. Because the financial burden is so high, damages are often measured in tens of millions of dollars.
How does the birth injury claim process work in labor and delivery malpractice cases? We start with a free consultation. Then our attorneys collect all relevant medical records related to the pregnancy, delivery, and postnatal care. Our birth injury medical experts review these records with us to determine whether the doctors and nurses breached the standard of care.
If the answer is yes, our Maryland birth injury attorneys consult with additional experts to assist in calculating the damages over the child’s lifetime. At this point, we often send out a settlement demand letter to the doctor, nurse, or hospital. But the reality is most childbirth injury cases require a lawsuit. Again, medical malpractice lawsuits rarely go to trial because a settlement is usually reached. But there is a real fight to get to that point.
Get a Maryland Birth Injury Attorney
Labor and delivery lawsuits are complex. The Maryland birth injury lawyer you hire matters. Many people are looking for a “birth injury near me.” What you really want is the best birth injury lawyer you can find. Because you need a skilled attorney to fight for you. If you want to investigate your potential claim, our legal team will discuss your case with you at no charge so you can learn more about what you are facing.
Call a Maryland birth injury malpractice lawyer at 800-553-8082 today or get a free online consultation.
- Birth injury lawsuits in Maryland (an overview of the process of bringing claims for mistakes made during delivery)
- An example childbirth injury case filed by Miller & Zois
- Malpractice during pregnancy that causes birth injuries
- Sample cerebral palsy lawsuit