New Jersey: What Is a Birth Injury Medical Malpractice Attorney?

Oct.23.2024
Medical Malpractice Law

Birth injuries are among the most painful and damaging types of medical malpractice. Newborns harmed by a doctor’s mistakes or oversights can suffer devastating, life-long consequences. For parents, raising a child with severe physical or neurological conditions often comes with immense emotional and financial burdens.

When these burdens result from a medical professional’s negligence, you shouldn’t have to shoulder them alone. With the help of a birth injury medical malpractice attorney, parents can take legal action to hold a doctor responsible for substandard care and ease the financial burden of expensive treatment. In this blog post, we’ll discuss what a birth injury malpractice attorney does and how they can help families get the justice they deserve.

Who Are Birth Injury Medical Malpractice Attorneys?

Birth injury malpractice attorneys represent families where the negligent actions of a medical professional have harmed an infant or mother. Negligence that leads to birth injuries can happen at any point before, during, or after delivery.

Some examples of birth injury malpractice that attorneys see include situations when a physician:

Misdiagnoses conditions during pregnancy,
Uses excessive force during delivery,
Administers the wrong dosage of labor-inducing drugs,
Delays a necessary C-section,
Fails to detect and address umbilical cord entanglement,
Doesn’t correctly supervise a midwife,
Ignores signs of infant respiratory issues,
Improperly uses forceps or vacuum extractors, and
Fails to monitor an infant after birth.

Oversights of this kind can cause serious physical and neurological damage to an infant. Conditions associated with birth-related injuries include:

Broken bones and skull fractures,
Brain damage from oxygen deprivation,
Nerve damage,
Infections,
Cerebral palsy,
Erb’s palsy, and
Klumpke paralysis.

Birth injury malpractice lawyers also often see cases when mothers suffer severe injury after a physician makes mistakes or cuts corners. Maternal birth injuries can include pelvic fractures, tears and internal bleeding, and other physical trauma resulting from substandard care before, during, or after delivery.

What Happens When Birth Injury Medical Malpractice Lawyers Take a Case?

A birth injury malpractice lawyer’s first job is to learn what went wrong during the birth and who was responsible. Many medical professionals are involved in the birth of a child, e.g., physicians, nurses, midwives, anesthesiologists, and the hospital as a whole. Any one of them can have a hand in malpractice. The attorney will gather information about the treatment you received. This involves reviewing detailed medical records and consulting with qualified medical experts. They also interview witnesses who observed the delivery and post-delivery treatment.

Your attorney will then send a letter to the party responsible for malpractice. This letter outlines your claims and requests compensation for your or your child’s injuries. In some cases, families can settle with the healthcare provider. This means both sides agree on financial compensation without the time and expense of going to trial.

If you can’t reach a settlement agreement, your lawyer will prepare to prove the physician’s negligence in court. Proving negligence requires showing the following:

A healthcare provider had a duty to deliver competent, professional care to you as a patient;
The healthcare provider failed to deliver the standard of care you were owed;
You or your child suffered significant harm; and
The provider’s breach of duty directly caused you harm.

Put simply, your lawyer must show that a competent doctor with the same skills and knowledge would have acted differently in the situation that caused your injuries. Doing this requires support from an independent medical expert who can testify to the standard of care you should have received.

How Can a Birth Injury Medical Malpractice Lawyer Help Me?

A birth injury medical malpractice attorney can help you hold negligent doctors and hospitals responsible for the harm their mistakes have caused. Public accountability can punish negligent professionals and ensure these mistakes can’t harm future children and mothers.

A successful birth injury malpractice case can also help you recover compensation to help ease the cost of a practitioner’s mistake. With the support of an attorney, victims of birth injury malpractice could receive compensation for:

Past medical expenses—hospital and ER bills, surgeries, lab testing, medications;
Future medical expenses—physical therapy, home accommodations, medical equipment, and long-term care needed to manage a child’s disability;
Mental health services—therapy and counseling related to the birth injury;
Pain and suffering—emotional and psychological distress caused by the malpractice; and
Punitive damages—limited compensation aimed to punish the doctor responsible in extreme cases of negligence.

An attorney’s negotiation skills and legal knowledge are essential for ensuring that your family recovers the maximum compensation available, whether in a settlement or a trial verdict.

Caring Advocates Prepared to Fight for Your Family

The aftermath of a birth injury is incredibly difficult for new parents. It’s understandable to feel powerless when facing your child’s suffering. However, it may not be too late for you to get justice for yourself and your infant. Our compassionate advocates at O’Connor, Parsons, Lane & Noble, LLC can help you get the accountability and relief you deserve. With over 100 years of combined malpractice experience, our firm is known throughout New Jersey for our skill and dedication to serving clients who medical professionals’ preventable errors have harmed. We have extensive experience helping families win just compensation for birth injury malpractice and are proud to hold the state record for the largest birth injury verdict in the state.