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Obstetrical Malpractice

We were able to achieve substantial financial help for another beautiful baby girl who suffered catastrophic brain damage due to lack of oxygen while she was being born. During her mother's labor and delivery there were worrisome signs of lack of progress of the labor and fetal distress, or what doctors now call nonreassuring fetal heart tone patterns on the electronic fetal monitoring. Sadly, this pattern went unappreciated in the middle of the night while one obstetrician was covering for another. When the primary doctor arrived early that morning, he recognized the problems and performed a prompt emergency delivery, but the damage had already been done. A medical negligence lawsuit against the covering Ob/Gyn led to mediation fairly early in the lawsuit process. This produced a settlement sufficient to fund a special needs trust with annuities which will pay benefits to the trust throughout the child's lifetime. This trust structuring of the settlement has preserved substantial needed public medical assistance while affording an opportunity for the trust to purchase a home for the child and her family to live in, the hiring of her mother as a special caregiver and other special assistance as needed.

In another case involving obstetrical care during pregnancy, we were able to obtain financial settlements for a mother and her child. This child suffered significant neurological harm due to a perinatal stroke at or near the time he was born. We determined that in the course of the pregnancy oligohydramnios or low amniotic fluid had been diagnosed, but had not been disclosed to the mother. It was our theory that the low amniotic fluid condition combined with the umbilical cord being wrapped twice around the baby's next to result in umbilical cord compression during the labor. This cord compression led to low blood flow or stasis of blood flow in the cord and combined with the natural hypercoagulation states of late pregnancy to cause a blood clot to form, which then broke away, traveled to the baby's brain and caused the stroke. Issues concerning communication of the amniotic fluid results led to a pre-trial settlement with the hospital. Challenges to our fairly novel scientific theory of stroke causation were pending as the remaining case was settled with the obstetrical group midway through trial.

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