How to Sue the Hospital for a Birth Injury to Your Baby

In many states, parents can sue using the hospital using a Birth injury lawyer for negligent medical care that harms their baby. The following article discusses some of the most important and common ways you may be able to sue your hospital and receive damages for birth injuries.

What Kinds of Legal Claims Can I Make Against My Hospital?

When your baby was born, you assumed that the hospital staff would provide your child with competent, reasonably safe medical care and that the hospital used reasonable measures to stop infections from spreading among patients. Often, you relied on the hospital's assurance that your baby was safe and healthy. When the delivery ended in a traumatic or dangerous event, you had every right to be angry and upset. That’s why you took it upon yourself to find the best law firm to find a legal remedy for your situation.

Because of the emotional stresses of labor and delivery, you may not be able to trust yourself to make a good decision about what to do next. You may not have the ability to consider all the legal options that are available to you. Or, you might want someone else to make decisions for you and help you through this confusing time.

What kind of case can I bring against the hospital?

In most states, an attorney can bring a claim against your hospital for any damage that resulted from its negligence during your delivery. The most common kinds of legal claims attorneys might bring include:

Negligence

In some situations, your hospital staff was simply negligent. This means that the hospital's actions did not meet the kind of care that a reasonably careful hospital would have provided.

Examples of a hospital staff's negligence include a hospital that didn't take the proper precautions before you were admitted; a hospital that failed to follow its policy about giving medications or performing tests; or a hospital that didn't put proper warning signs on the delivery room about potential dangers.

In other situations, your hospital was at fault for failing to use reasonable care and taking appropriate measures to protect the health of your baby. In these types of cases, the standard of care is higher than that in ordinary negligence cases. The standard of care means that a reasonably careful hospital would have provided the kind of care a reasonable patient would expect.

In some situations, your hospital might even have disregarded reasonable standards of care for safety. In these situations, the hospital staff members' actions were negligent, and they knew that their actions could cause harm or damage to your baby.

Common examples of negligence include:

Failing to take the necessary precautions before you were admitted. For example, if you had a difficult pregnancy, your hospital did not put up warning signs about potential dangers.

Taking unnecessary risks with a patient's health or life. For example, if you were a high-risk pregnancy, your hospital did not give you antibiotics or other medications before or during labor.

Not properly maintaining cleanliness in the delivery room. For example, if your hospital did not have a sign about the health risks posed by dirty instruments.

Failing to train staff about the risks of the treatments they were performing. For example, if your hospital did not tell you that giving you an epidural could cause nerve damage or paralysis.

Failing to provide the proper supervision by staff. An example of this would be if your hospital did not train nurses or doctors to check a baby's heartbeat on a regularly.

You must understand you're not alone in this fight

You need a Birth injury lawyer to fight on your side. You will need a lawyer to help you file a lawsuit against your hospital's negligence. Your lawyer can help you navigate the complicated claims process and make sure that all necessary paperwork is filed correctly.