You can get professional legal support if your child, from a newborn to a teenager, was injured or developed a serious condition because of medical malpractice. In this situation, you can rely on a Newark pediatric malpractice lawyer from our team at O’Connor, Parsons, Lane & Noble to build your claim, explain your next steps, and guide you through the legal process.
We have over 200 years of combined legal experience, and we’re ready to put your family first in this difficult time. You can rely on a Newark medical malpractice lawyer to stand by you every step of the way, so reach out now.
Why Hire a Pediatric Malpractice Lawyer in Newark, NJ?
Hiring an attorney after an act of pediatric malpractice means you’ll have someone on your side, supporting your family every step of the way. Our team knows how to handle neonatal malpractice in Newark, and we’re ready to:
- Answer any questions your family has
- Gather evidence to back up your family’s claim
- Track the losses that you experience
- Explain the steps you need to take through the legal process
- Protect your claim
- Stand up for you every step of the way
We understand the tremendous stress and emotional turmoil you can experience after your infant sustains an injury. We’re here to help with claims involving neonatal malpractice, and you can rely on us to provide the personalized legal assistance that you deserve.
Compensation for Neonatal Malpractice Claims
Our team can help you get the funds you need to cover the economic and non–economic damages faced by your family. You may qualify for funds to pay for:
Your Child’s Medical Expenses
The costs of providing care to neonatal infants after an act of medical malpractice can quickly skyrocket. You may face high costs that we can force the liable party to cover through a legal claim.
Your Lost Wages
Parents often have to take significant time off work to care for their infant children after an act of medical malpractice. You may even have to leave your career to provide the care your child needs. The liable party may have to cover your lost earnings in this situation.
Your Child’s Pain and Suffering
Your child may experience significant physical pain and emotional distress throughout their life due to neonatal malpractice. We can determine a fair value for these non-economic effects of a physician’s mistake, adding them to your family’s legal claim.
Why Hire Us to Handle Pediatric Malpractice Claims?
Our team at O’Connor, Parsons, Lane & Noble understands what your family is going through after a medical professional fails to provide proper care to your newborn. We can get to work quickly on your behalf, focusing on your legal needs so you can care for your family’s emotional needs.
We believe in taking a collaborative and team-based approach to helping our clients. We’ll put you first, listen to your concerns, and adjust our services to meet your family’s specific needs. We also handle these claims on a contingency basis, so you’ll only have to pay for legal fees after we resolve your case.
Our Experience Handling Pediatric Malpractice
Our law firm has a reputation for successfully handling pediatric malpractice cases. We secured $15 million for a family after a medical facility failed to give an infant a needed heart surgery, resulting in a significant stroke and lifelong medical issues.
We also brought a family $5 million after their child suffered a seizure that lasted for three hours. The staff never noticed the seizure, resulting in significant oxygen deprivation to the pediatric patient and cognitive impairment.
You can discuss the specifics of your family’s claim and your potential compensation when you reach out to us for a risk-free consultation.
Types of Pediatric Malpractice Claims We Handle
Our legal team has the experience necessary to handle a wide range of cases involving neonatal malpractice. For example, you can reach out to us for help with claims involving:
Failure to Diagnose
Medical professionals sometimes fail to diagnose a baby’s health issue in a timely fashion. Even a delay of hours or days can mean the difference between giving your child the care they need and lifelong disabilities, so we may take action against doctors who wait too long to identify a problem.
Failure to Properly Treat
Some healthcare workers diagnose a baby’s condition and then fail to provide proper treatment. In these cases, your family may also have a valid medical malpractice claim. We need to investigate what happened to learn more about your situation before we help you take legal action.
Common Errors in Children’s Medical Care
Children aren’t small adults. Their symptoms can be harder to read, their medication doses depend on their weight, and conditions can worsen quickly. Pediatric malpractice claims we review often involve:
- Missed infections. Meningitis, sepsis, and other serious infections can look like a common virus at first. When a doctor or emergency room sends a sick child home without the right workup, the delay can cause permanent harm. Errors in the emergency room are a frequent source of these claims.
- Diagnostic errors. A missed appendicitis, a fracture read as a sprain, or a tumor attributed to something minor are all forms of misdiagnosis that can change a child’s outcome.
- Medication errors. Because pediatric doses are calculated by weight, a decimal point in the wrong place can lead to a dangerous overdose. Learn more about medication error claims.
- Newborn care. Untreated newborn jaundice, unrecognized breathing problems, and oxygen deprivation that leads to hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy can cause lifelong disabilities. Injuries that happen during labor and delivery are covered in more detail on our birth injury page.
Deadlines for Children’s Malpractice Claims in New Jersey
New Jersey gives injured children more time to file than adults, but the rules depend on when the injury happened. A claim for an injury that occurred at or before birth can generally be filed until the child’s 13th birthday. For a child injured after birth, the deadline is generally paused until the child turns 18, giving them until age 20 to file. Parents’ own claims, such as for the medical bills they paid, can follow different and sometimes shorter deadlines, and a wrongful death claim generally must be filed within two years of the child’s death. Shortly after filing, New Jersey also requires an affidavit of merit from an appropriately licensed medical professional.
Because the evidence in these cases, including medical records, monitoring data, and the memories of the people involved, is best preserved early, it’s worth speaking with a lawyer as soon as you suspect something went wrong, even if the deadline seems far off.
Pediatric Malpractice FAQs
Can parents recover their own losses?
Yes. Parents can generally recover the medical expenses they pay for their child’s care while the child is a minor, and in some cases their own lost wages from caring for an injured child. The child’s own claim covers pain and suffering, future care after age 18, and lost earning capacity.
What if the doctor says the outcome was unavoidable?
Providers often explain a bad outcome as an unavoidable complication. Sometimes that’s true. An independent review of the records by a qualified pediatric expert is the best way to find out whether the care met accepted standards.
Talk to Us About Your Pediatric Malpractice Claim in Newark, NJ
You can reach out to a Newark pediatric malpractice attorney from our team at O’Connor, Parsons, Lane & Noble if a medical professional fails to provide proper care for your infant.
Our team stands ready to represent the best interests of your family throughout all stages of the legal process.
We can explain the process of filing a medical malpractice claim and your family’s legal options when you reach out for a risk-free initial consultation.