Washington D.C. Birth Injury Lawyers
Legal Help With Birth Injury Cases
Washington, DC Medical Malpractice Attorneys
Poor medical care at birth can result in many different types of serious, life-long injuries to a baby or to its mother. An obstetrician or a labor-and-delivery nurse can fail to recognize signs of fetal distress during the mother’s labor, leading to the baby suffering hypoxic-ischemic brain injury resulting in cerebral palsy and the need for life-long medical care. An obstetrician can fail to timely recognize during delivery that the baby has become stuck in the birth canal because of shoulder dystocia or, having recognized this medical emergency, can nevertheless use excessive force to deliver the baby tearing the baby’s brachial plexis nerve and leaving the baby with a permanent loss of use of his or her arm. An obstetrician can also fail to carefully monitor and assess the fetus during the mother’s prenatal care, an oversight which can lead to medical emergencies resulting in entirely preventable serious injury or death of baby or mother.
Examples include failing to identify fetal macrosonia (a baby who has grown too large in utero to be safely delivered vaginally), failing to identify a baby who is showing signs of malnutrition in utero and who will have difficulty responding to the stress of a protracted labor; failure to identify the presence of Group B Strep (GBS) in the mother’s vagina and take preventive steps to avoid the baby acquiring a GBS infection in utero or at birth; and failing to identify the mother’s risk of experiencing placenta previa or placenta accretia, both of which can result in the mother bleeding to death at the time of delivery.
New mothers and their babies are entitled to receive reasonable medical care. When the obstetrician or the labor and delivery health care team becomes careless, the law requires that they bear responsibility for the resulting catastrophic injuries to the mother or to her baby. If a bus driver does not pay attention and carelessly strikes a pedestrian, the bus driver is legally responsible for the injured pedestrians harms and injuries. So too are the obstetrician, the delivery room team and the hospital or prenatal clinic for carelessness that occurs during pregnancy and delivery.
When devastating birth injuries occur, the lawyers at Schultz and Trombly P.L.L.C., work hard to enforce the rights of the injured baby or mother to obtain compensation for all of the life-long harm and injuries they have suffered. This journey is typically long, arduous and expensive, but, working on a contingency fee basis, it is a journey that the attorneys at Schultz and Trombly, P.L.L.C. will gladly undertake to right a wrong and provide assistance for the seriously injured and their families.
For more information about the legal aspects of Birth Injuries, please visit our Birth Injuries Information Center.
For examples of birth injury cases we have handled in the past or are currently pursuing, please visit our Medical Malpractice / Negligence Cases page.
