For new parents, anticipating a baby is one of life’s greatest joys. But learning your child has suffered a birth injury, especially if your physician or delivery team may have been responsible for it, can turn that joy into deep sadness, worry, and anger. Birth injuries like hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy can require extensive medical intervention and rehabilitative care. And this care can be costly. By filing a birth injury lawsuit, you are not only holding your provider accountable for their actions, but the compensation you recover can also provide essential financial assistance toward your child’s care. At Kuhlman Law, our experienced St. Paul birth injury lawyers can help you understand your legal options so you can make the best decisions for yourself and your child.
What is HIE?
Hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy is a type of brain damage that occurs when an infant’s brain has been deprived of oxygen or blood flow. This may happen during the baby’s prenatal development, during labor and delivery, or after the baby is born.
Brain cells begin to decay and die without sufficient oxygen and blood circulation. And the longer the baby’s brain is without oxygen, the more severe the impact. With immediate intervention, some children diagnosed with HIE may have no long-term consequences at all. However, in more serious cases, hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy can result in severe disabilities, including cognitive or physical developmental delays, cerebral palsy, epilepsy, difficulty hearing or seeing, or other impairments.
Possible Causes of HIE Involving Negligence
Not all instances of hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy can be attributed to medical negligence. There are many different causes of HIE. But negligence may have come into play if your doctor or delivery team.
- Made errors in or failed to monitor your child’s fetal heart rate
- Failed to respond to signs of fetal distress promptly and correctly
- Mismanaged your baby’s birth presentation
- Mismanaged or misdiagnosed dangerous issues with the placenta, uterus, or umbilical cord.
- Mismanaged or misdiagnosed your preeclampsia or gestational diabetes
- Failed to perform a timely C-section when it was necessary
- Failed to administer immediate cooling therapy to a baby showing signs of HIE
Unfortunately, it may only be later, when you receive a diagnosis or begin to see symptoms of HIE, that you have concerns about the care you and your child received before, during, or after labor and delivery. It’s important to discuss this with a birth injury lawyer so you can take a closer look at the circumstances surrounding your care. You may have the right to seek compensation from that provider and hold them liable for your damages.
What Steps Does a St. Paul Birth Injury Lawyer Take When Pursuing Legal Action Against a Provider?
If you suspect a provider’s negligence may have caused or contributed to your child’s HIE, it’s critical to get the advice and guidance of a skilled birth injury lawyer. Caring for a child with special needs will be costly, and if medical negligence is involved, you can seek financial compensation from the at-fault party.
But it’s important to understand that not all medical mistakes can be considered malpractice. To prove medical negligence, you must prove that your provider failed to meet the established medical standard of care in your situation and that this failure caused your child’s HIE. This is when hiring a seasoned birth injury lawyer can be critical.
First Meeting/Case Evaluation
Your birth injury attorney will first want to determine whether you have a case for medical negligence. Your lawyer will want to review your prenatal and hospital records to understand what happened. They will also ask questions about your health before, during, and after the delivery and how your providers addressed these. Were there any complications or unusual events? Did you have any suspicions and concerns at any point, and when did you have them?
Establishing the Medical Standard of Care in Your Situation
Your lawyer will then need to determine if your provider met the standard of care in your situation. “Standard of care” is what a reasonably competent and skilled medical professional with a similar background in the same medical community would have provided in the same circumstances. Standards of care can vary depending on a provider’s professional and education level, their experience, and even the area where they practice. Consequently, the standard of care for a medical professional can vary from place to place and situation to situation.
Proving Negligence
Negligence has specific elements that must be proven to establish liability. Not only must there be proof a negligent action happened, but it also must be proven that this action directly resulted in your child’s HIE. Proving negligence can be complicated, so birth injury lawyers often partner with medical experts to help establish a clear line of cause and effect between the negligent action, the resulting injury, and the damages that resulted.
Calculating Damages
Your birth injury lawyer will also calculate your damages based on your economic and non-economic losses. These will include hospital expenses and medical costs, the future potential costs of rehabilitation, treatment, and care for your child, and the mental anguish, pain, and suffering that resulted from their negligent actions. As part of this calculation, your lawyer may work with specialists to create a comprehensive care plan that reflects any future potential expenses related to your child’s condition.
Filing a Lawsuit and Negotiation of a Settlement
Once your case has been prepared, your lawyer will file a lawsuit against all responsible parties. Defendants can include your doctor, the hospital, or any other associated medical staff. During the litigation process, there may be opportunities to negotiate with the provider’s or hospital’s insurance company or their legal team. At this time, you and your lawyer may decide to settle, and your lawyer will negotiate a settlement covering all your damages. If a fair settlement can’t be negotiated, the case will proceed to trial.
Getting Skilled Legal Assistance
Caring for the special needs of a child with HIE can often be costly. If you suspect your physician or delivery team’s actions caused or contributed to your child’s HIE, compensation from a medical malpractice claim can help offset these expenses while holding the at-fault party accountable.
If your child has been diagnosed with a birth injury, don’t face this vulnerable time alone. Let us help. At Kuhlman Law, our highly skilled St. Paul birth injury lawyers have an in-depth understanding of hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy, medical negligence laws, and the nuances of malpractice settlements. Call us at (503) 479-3646 or schedule a no-cost consultation through our website contact form. You pay no legal fees until we recover compensation on your behalf.
Disclosure:
The information provided on this website does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal advice; instead, all information, content, and materials available on this site are for general informational purposes only. Information on this website may not constitute the most up-to-date legal or other information. This website contains links to other third-party websites. Such links are only for the convenience of the reader, user, or browser; Kuhlman Law, LLC and its members do not recommend or endorse the contents of the third-party sites.
Readers of this website should contact an attorney to obtain advice with respect to any particular legal matter. No reader, user, or browser of this site should act or refrain from acting on the basis of information on this site without first seeking legal advice from counsel in the relevant jurisdiction. Only your individual attorney can provide assurances that the information contained herein – and your interpretation of it – is applicable or appropriate to your particular situation. Use of, and access to, this website or any of the links or resources contained within the site do not create an attorney-client relationship between the reader, user, or browser and website authors, contributors, contributing law firms, or committee members and their respective employers.
The views expressed at, or through, this site are those of the individual authors writing in their individual capacities only – not those of their respective employers, Kuhlman Law, LLC, or committee/task force as a whole. All liability with respect to actions taken or not taken based on the contents of this site are hereby expressly disclaimed. The content on this posting is provided “as is;” no representations are made that the content is error-free.
