Birth Injury Lawyers Serving Rhode Island
Birth injuries are often devastating and heartbreaking. This is because they occur at a time when a family is most helpless. They are often unfamiliar with the hazards an improper delivery imposes. They are also unsure of what can happen when a medical professional does not follow proper medical procedures. As such, families trust doctors (and nurses) to help them through the birthing process.
Unfortunately, serious and fatal mistakes may occur during labor and delivery. When an injury occurs, parents are not always sure of whether it was preventable. These birth injuries are referred to as Obstetrical Negligence. They often result in severe and fatal injuries to the newborn. Some of these injuries include cerebral palsy and brachial palsy.
Here at Mandell, Boisclair & Mandell, Ltd, our experienced Rhode Island birth injury attorneys work with our own staff nurse paralegal to investigate birth injury claims in Rhode Island when suspected obstetrical malpractice resulted in injuries or wrongful death.
What Is a Birth Injury?
A birth injury refers to any type of injury suffered during labor, delivery, or in the time shortly after birth. These injuries range from minor bruises to more serious brain damage. Birth injuries can manifest in many different ways. They can cause minor injuries that heal quickly with minimal help. They can also cause serious impairments, resulting in a lifetime of disability, pain, and suffering.
At Mandell, Boisclair & Mandell, Ltd, our Rhode Island birth injury lawyers offer compassionate and aggressive legal representation from the start. Our birth injury attorneys have successfully represented families throughout Rhode Island whose babies suffered serious birth injuries, including:
- Hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy
- Birth asphyxia
- Cerebral palsy
- Erb’s palsy
- Brachial plexus injuries
- Fractures
- Paralysis
- Periventricular leukomalacia
- Seizure disorders
What Is the Most Common Birth Injury?
According to The Merck Manual, the most common form of birth injury is trauma to the baby’s head and brain. The seriousness of birth-related head injuries can range from superficial bruises and scratches on the scalp to skull fractures and bleeding and cell death in or around the brain.
Serious head injuries may require emergency treatment in your child’s first moments of life, and result in lengthy hospitalization. A brain injury sustained at birth can result in a lifetime of motor and cognitive deficits.
Bone fractures are also common birth injuries. Trauma to the shoulder area may damage the brachial plexus nerves, potentially resulting in long-term or permanent weakness and dysfunction of the arm and hand.
What Are the Long-Term Effects of a Birth Injury?
The effects of a birth injury on your child will depend on the nature and severity of the trauma. Serious outcomes in the event of a birth injury may include:
- Cognitive deficits
- Mobility issues up to and including paralysis
- Motor skill impairments
- Speech and language difficulties
- Delayed development
- Vision loss
- Chronic seizures
Tragically, some birth injuries may prove fatal. If you suspect medical negligence resulted in your child’s serious injury or death, it is important to seek legal guidance promptly.
What Is Obstetrical Negligence?
During pregnancy and childbirth, women in Rhode Island deserve skilled medical care to ensure a safe and successful delivery. Medical professionals must monitor expecting mothers and their babies closely for signs of complications. This involves good prenatal care, as well as diligent monitoring throughout labor and delivery. When doctors, nurses or medical professionals fail to uphold the standard of care, they can be guilty of obstetrical negligence.
Obstetrical negligence is the basis for many different types of medical malpractice claims. Any medical professional can be guilty of obstetrical negligence, including doctors, nurses, medical professionals, and staff members.
Proving medical malpractice is more difficult than establishing liability in other types of personal injury cases, such as car accidents. To prove obstetrical negligence, your Rhode Island birth injury lawyer must show that the medical professional:
- Owed the patient a duty of care
- Breached that duty of care
- This breach directly resulted in injuries or losses
It is important to know that not every adverse outcome is the result of medical negligence. This is a highly specialized area of law. As such, your case requires a birth injury attorney with considerable knowledge and experience representing injured babies and their families. Our experienced birth injury lawyers will investigate your case closely to determine if obstetrical negligence is to blame.
Common Causes of Providence Birth Injuries
There are many different ways obstetrical negligence can occur in Rhode Island hospitals and clinics. However, the most common ways include:
- Administering wrong medications
- Giving wrong advice or medical treatment during pregnancy
- Failure to adequately monitor and control gestational diabetes
- Medical misdiagnosis during pregnancy or childbirth
- Errors resulting in premature birth
- Medical errors during delivery resulting in birth injuries
- Negligence during labor and delivery
- Failure to adequately monitor
- Failure to recognize the need for Cesarean section operation
Medical professionals are often overworked and understaffed. This can result in serious and fatal injuries to newborns and their mothers. When this occurs, a hospital or medical institution can be held liable for negligence as well. A hospital has a responsibility to ensure the safety of its patients as well. This includes providing adequate staffing at every moment during pregnancy, labor, and delivery.
Who Is Responsible for Birth Injuries?
In birth injury cases where negligence is a factor, one or more parties may be liable for your child’s injuries. The circumstances may vary, but the liable parties in your case may include:
- Your OB or OB/GYN for negligent prenatal care and/or labor and delivery errors
- The surgeon, if your baby was delivered via C-section or required surgery after birth
- The anesthesiologist who induced labor or was involved in the C-section and other procedures
- Your baby’s pediatrician, if he or she failed to perform tests that could have detected a dangerous condition in the first weeks or months of life
- The hospital where the baby was born due to negligence by its doctors, nurses, medical assistants, surgical technicians, and other staff involved in your care and/or your baby’s care
What Compensation Is Available in a Birth Injury Claim?
One of the most devastating elements of any birth injury case is the impact it has not only on a young child but the entire family. The child may suffer lifelong physical and mental challenges, and parents suffer not just emotionally but financially.
The lifetime costs of caring for and treating a disabled child are enormous. If your child’s disability is the result of medical negligence that occurred at birth, you should not have to bear these costs alone.
Depending on the damages you and your family have sustained, compensation may be available in your birth injury claim for:
- Past and ongoing medical costs, including prescription medications, surgery, therapies and rehabilitation, and more
- The cost of in-home care for your child
- Assistive devices, such as crutches or a wheelchair
- Modifications to your home and vehicle
- Your child’s pain and suffering
Thinking about the extent of costs in a birth injury claim is overwhelming. It is important to contact an experienced birth injury lawyer who can evaluate the damages in your case and advise you how much you may be able to recover.
How Do I Prove Negligence in a Providence Birth Injury Claim?
Birth injury claims are extremely difficult to prove without experienced legal counsel and expert support. Our birth injury lawyers will take multiple steps on your behalf to prove negligence on the part of the healthcare provider and pursue fair compensation in your case:
- Investigating the birth injury: The medicine underlying birth injuries is complex. Our attorneys will thoroughly review your medical records and retain experts for assistance in determining how errors on the part of one or more healthcare providers resulted in your baby’s injury.
- Gathering evidence of negligence: To recover compensation for a birth injury, you must be able to show that the injury is the result of negligence on the part of practitioners involved in the delivery and care of your baby. Consulting medical experts can review the evidence collected by our team and identify any lapses in the standard of care.
- Calculating damages: Given the potential lifetime costs of a birth injury, accurately accounting for your losses is essential for pursuing the compensation you deserve. Attorneys at Mandell, Boisclair & Mandell, Ltd meticulously calculate all of your current and future economic damages and non-economic losses and explore all legal options for recovery.
After diligently collecting and thoroughly reviewing the evidence in your case, our attorneys can file a claim against the negligent party or parties.
If a fair settlement cannot be reached, it is crucial to work with an experienced trial attorney who can take your case to court. The Rhode Island birth injury lawyers at Mandell, Boisclair & Mandell, Ltd have extensive experience handling all aspects of birth injury claims, from settlement negotiations to preparing cases for trial and presenting them in court.
Do You Need a Providence Birth Injury Lawyer For Help With Your Negligence Claim?
When medical malpractice occurs, families can often receive a substantial amount of compensation. We know that no amount of money could ever undo the harm your child suffered. However, this compensation can help you care for your child and his or her future needs and disabilities.
An experienced lawyer can give you legal advice and help you during this difficult time. Your lawyer will need to investigate the events that led to your child’s injury. Through meticulous investigation, your lawyer can determine if a medical professional’s negligence is to blame.
At Mandell, Boisclair and Mandell, Ltd, our Rhode Island birth injury attorneys have the experience and resources needed to tackle complex birth injury cases. We know how to prove obstetrical negligence and fight large hospitals and insurance companies. Our law firm believes in holding negligent physicians and institutions accountable for their mistakes. A birth injury lawyer at our law firm will fight aggressively for you and your family during this time.
There are several different types of birth injury, each with unique symptoms and consequences. Broadly speaking, however, potential signs of a birth injury in a newborn may include:
- Breathing abnormalities
- Feeding difficulties
- Excessive sleepiness
- Abnormal or absent reflexes
- Poor muscle tone
- Seizures
As a child grows older, signs of birth injury may become more pronounced, progressing to include developmental delays, motor skill difficulties, delays in speech and language development, learning difficulties, and slow or asymmetric growth patterns. Some types of birth injury may also result in behavioral problems, such as hyperactivity or difficulties regulating emotions.
If you suspect a birth injury has resulted in these or other symptoms for your child, it’s a good idea to talk to an experienced lawyer as soon as possible. At Mandell, Boisclair & Mandell, our Providence birth injury lawyers can assess these symptoms, evaluate medical records, and investigate the circumstances of your child’s birth to help you determine if you have cause to file a lawsuit.
While birth injuries are injuries that occur during labor or delivery, the risk of a difficult birth can, in some cases, be predicted during routine prenatal care. Ultrasounds, monitoring, and certain diagnostic tests can sometimes detect problems such as abnormal fetal positioning or be used to identify maternal conditions that could potentially contribute to a traumatic birth.
It is important to remember that, even with proper prenatal care, increased risks of birth injury are not always predictable. However, if you suspect inadequate or negligent prenatal care contributed to your child’s injury, our Rhode Island birth injury lawyers are here to help. We work with medical experts to thoroughly evaluate health records, enabling us to determine if malpractice may have played a role in your child’s injury
A birth defect is a medical term referring to a condition that is present at birth. They may be a result of genetic factors, environmental influences, or maternal behavior. Some birth defects impact the structure of the body (such as cleft lip or spina bifida) while others impact bodily functions (such as congenital heart defects and gastroschisis).
Birth injury occurs due to physical harm suffered during labor or delivery. Injury may be the result of aggressive birthing techniques, failure to monitor properly, medication errors, and other types of medical malpractice. Birth injury is typically preventable with proper medical care and intervention.
Birth injuries can result in significant financial strain for families. Immediate medical bills for surgeries, medications, and hospital stays can be compounded by long-term healthcare costs such as physical, occupational, and speech therapy, resulting in continuous expenses. Families may also need to invest in specialized equipment—such as wheelchairs, braces, or communication devices—and make adaptability modifications to their home to accommodate the child’s needs. The cost of these things can quickly add up.
In addition to attending to the medical needs of the child, it is common for one parent to have to reduce working hours or stop working altogether. This results in a loss of income that can make it a challenge to cover the daily living expenses of a special needs child. Special education costs, respite services, and other needs may also be expensive, further compromising a family’s financial stability.
When your child sustains a birth injury due to medical negligence, you should not be burdened with these costs. A birth injury lawsuit will seek to cover all of your expenses—now and into the future—allowing you to focus on the more important task of providing excellent care for your child.
At Mandell, Boisclair & Mandell, our birth injury lawyers refuse to add to the financial strain impacting families of injured children. It costs you nothing to discuss your case with us and, if we take your case, you owe us nothing until we secure a settlement or verdict in your favor.
If your child is displaying signs of a birth injury or has been diagnosed with a condition, such as cerebral palsy or Erb’s palsy, that may be related to an injury at birth, it’s a good idea to talk to a birth injury attorney to determine if you should file a lawsuit. Your lawyer will evaluate your case and conduct an investigation into your labor and delivery to decide if taking legal action is the right course for your claim. Depending on the specifics of your case, medical experts may be needed to evaluate prenatal, surgical, and post-labor care to uncover any signs of negligence or malpractice that may have contributed to your child’s condition.
The Providence birth injury attorneys at our firm have decades of experience investigating medical malpractice claims—including birth injuries—to determine how the injury occurred. During your free case evaluation, we will listen to your story and provide straightforward legal advice to help you choose whether filing a claim or taking another course of action will best suit your family’s and child’s needs.
Filing a birth injury lawsuit in Rhode Island begins with consulting an experienced attorney. This initial consultation should be free of cost and obligation, allowing you to discuss your claim without fear of incurring additional expenses.
During your initial consultation, your lawyer will evaluate the details of your case. If you have cause to file a claim, they will also discuss potential legal strategies and outline the next steps.
While each birth injury claim is unique and steps may vary slightly, the process may involve:
- Investigation. This includes the review of medical records and childbirth processes to identify deviations from acceptable standards of care.
- Expert Consultation. This includes working with medical experts to evaluate the link between a medical professional’s actions or inaction and your child’s injury.
- Filing the Complaint. This is when the legal complaint, detailing the allegations against the medical provider and the request for compensation, is filed with the court.
- Discovery. During discovery, both parties exchange relevant information—such as documents and witness depositions—to build their respective cases.
- Pretrial Negotiations. Before a birth injury claim heads to trial, both parties will meet and attempt to negotiate an appropriate settlement.
- Trial Preparations. If no settlement is reached, evidence will be organized, witnesses will be prepared, and a trial strategy will be crafted. At this point, it is essential to have an attorney who is proven in the courtroom.
- Trial. This is where your case is presented in front of a judge and jury. Both sides will argue their case and the jury will determine if damages are to be awarded.
The birth injury lawsuit process may seem lengthy and complex, but a thoughtful and experienced legal team will provide you with the support, guidance, and protection you need to make the experience as smooth as possible.
At Mandell, Boisclair & Mandell, our trial lawyers have a history of securing substantial settlements and verdicts for injured babies and their families. During your free case evaluation, we can discuss the process for birth injury lawsuits to ensure you understand what seeking compensation may entail.
Contact Our Providence Birth Injury Attorneys Today
If your baby suffered an injury, we can help you determine if medical negligence was to blame. If a doctor or medical professional caused your child’s injury, you need a compassionate law firm on your side to fight for you. Birth injuries can be catastrophic and may result in a lifetime of pain and suffering for your child.
At Mandell, Boisclair & Mandell, Ltd, our Rhode Island birth injury attorneys represent injured babies and their families after a devastating birth injury. Call us today at (401) 273-8330 or fill out our confidential contact form for a FREE consultation and review of your case. Someone at our law office will be there to answer your questions. We are here to help.
The attorneys at Mandell, Boisclair & Mandell, Ltd have successfully represented individuals and loved ones in various injury cases. From auto accidents and nursing home injuries to truck accidents and medical malpractice, we are ready to help you during this difficult time. Call us today!
