What is Birth Injury Law

What is Birth Injury Law


What is Birth Injury Law? This is a subset of medical malpractice law and includes personal injury cases stemming from a failure to adequately respond to the following circumstances: maternal or fetal bleeding; fetal distress or anoxia (lack of oxygen); umbilical cord complications; the need for a cesarean section; infections; the anticipation of a large baby and related complications; and other maternal health complications. Injury can also result from incompetent or improper use of forceps or a vacuum extractor.

Negligent prenatal care can also result in harm to the baby and/or mother. This can include the failure to diagnose the mother’s medical condition; failure to identify birth defects; failure to identify an ectopic pregnancy; or failure to diagnose a disease that could be contagious to the baby.

Birth injury cases are generally classified by two types: brain injury, or anoxic brain injury, where the physician or the medical staff failed to properly monitor the birth process with fetal monitoring and the failure to order a caesarean section in a timely fashion; and dystocia, which is caused by the failure to properly help the baby down the vaginal canal during a vaginal delivery and can result in various types of palsy and other complications.

Birth injury lawsuits seek to provide the families of the injured baby with financial compensation for the child’s injury.