Childbirth Injuries

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Childbirth is life’s greatest miracle. It is also fraught with dangers if people don’t receive the care they should.

Childbirth is a miraculous event during which the life of the delivering mother and her child rely on receiving proper care of their doctors. Unfortunately, it can also be a dangerous experience and childbirth injuries can occur during labor and delivery with can have lifelong consequences. Some common injuries and resulting conditions suffered by newborn children as a result of inadequate care during birth include:

Hemorrhaging
Paralysis
Brain damage
Swelling of the scalp
Spinal cord injuries
Cerebral palsy
Brachial plexus palsy, including Erb’s palsy and Klumpke’s palsy
Death

And some of the most common medical issues faced by mothers during childbirth are:

Preeclampsia:
Anesthesia complications;
C-section complications;
Episiotomy complications

These cases are complicated and often require awards that account for a lifetime of care for mothers and children. SGT attorneys have decades of experience litigating and resolving these cases, and have achieved record setting results for clients. If you or your child is or has experienced any of these issues, or others issues you suspect are related to below-standard care during childbirth, contact SGT today.

Representative Cases

Expecting mother pregnant with twins was admitted to the hospital to give birth. Complications arose during delivery of the second child, and his heart rate fell to an alarming 50 to 70 beats per minute. Despite immediately noticing that the baby’s umbilical cord was being restricted, the doctor waited another ten minutes to order a C-section. The baby boy suffered brain damage and is now a quadriplegic, unable to walk, talk or eat normally. SGT represented the parents and recovered $38.5 million, which was upheld on appeal.

Written up in the New England Journal of Medicine for the superb quality of the presentation of the case, Pisel vs. Stamford Hospital was the first verdict over $1 million in the State of Connecticut. The case also created significant medical malpractice law in Connecticut that is still cited today and set safety standards for hospitalized psychiatric patients. Jury verdict of $3.6 million.

SGT recovered for a 34-year-old woman who sustained permanent brain damage because an anesthesiologist failed to properly monitor her vital signs during the cesarean delivery of her first child.

SGT achieved a settlement for the family of a woman who fell into irreversible coma during childbirth. Mia House checked into Norwalk Hospital to deliver her first child, but fell into an irreversible coma when anesthesiologist Jay Angeluzzi failed to notice when her brain wasn’t receiving enough oxygen. Investigators found that Angeluzzi had disconnected the electronic alarms meant to warn of such a problem, and he also could not account for the powerful narcotics he signed for before the procedure.

After 11 weeks of trial, SGT settled claims for the family of a baby boy who suffered a brain hemorrhage, along with traumatic and hypoxic-ischemic brain damage, as a result of a birth injury during labor and delivery from the improper use of vacuum extraction equipment.

SGT recovered $4.46 million for clients for the wrongful death of a 43-year-old woman after she was allowed to bleed to death alone in her hospital room after the cesarean section of her third child.

On the eve of trial, Defendants settled claims alleging fault for severe brain damage with resulting cerebral palsy and severe cognitive deficits in a baby boy whose mother’s uterus became overstimulated when a labor-inducing drug, Pitocin, was negligently administered.

Doctor delayed cesarean section which caused the second of identical twins to suffer severe oxygen deprivation during her birth with resulting catastrophic brain damage, cerebral palsy and loss of intellectual function.

SGT recovered $9.8 million for our clients whose baby girl suffered devastating brain damage after her delivery was delayed despite signs that she was suffering from severe oxygen deprivation during the labor. Her condition was exacerbated when an umbilical cord prolapse was negligently managed.

Despite indications of fetal distress, a hospital obstetrical staff member gives a patient a labor-inducing drug and delays performing a Cesarean section. The baby suffers oxygen deprivation, resulting in brain damage, cerebral palsy and loss of intellectual function.