Morgan & Morgan, PA, a national personal injury law firm based in Orlando Florida, achieved a $38,750,000 in a case of medical negligence. In this tragic lawsuit, failure to perform a timely C-section on the mother resulted in a birth injury to the infant. Delayed C-sections, in cases where the standard of care dictates that the operation be performed, are serious acts of medical negligence that can result in irreversible injury to the baby, such as cerebral palsy and serious brain damage.
Cerebral Palsy, like many other birth injuries, are avoidable. If an unborn baby is not receiving enough oxygen, an abnormal heart rate will appear. This is known as “fetal distress,” and should be monitored by the doctor and healthcare professionals who are delivering the baby. This is done during early labor and following each contraction in late labor, by using a fetal stethoscope to check the heart rate approximately every fifteen minutes.
Fetal distress can often be corrected using three possible methods: 1) The mother can be turned on her left side, which may help increase the baby’s heart rate. 2) The amount of intravenous fluids given to the mother can be increased. 3) The mother can be given more oxygen. In the event that all other measures fail to correct the baby’s abnormal heart rate, the doctor must attempt to deliver the baby as quickly as possible. This may be done through cesarean section, the use of forceps, or a vacuum extractor. In the situation that led to this lawsuit, the doctor did not perform the necessary C-section in a timely manner.
While not all birth injuries are the result of medical malpractice and some regrettably arise during the natural course of labor, the injury attorneys at Morgan and Morgan encourage the parents of a child injured at birth to seek legal counsel to determine if the injury was the result of medical negligence.
About Morgan and Morgan
