Can You Sue for Medical Negligence During Childbirth? Here’s What You Need to Know

Bringing a child into the world should be a joyful experience, but when medical negligence during childbirth leads to serious injuries, it can leave families facing unimaginable challenges. If a doctor, nurse, or hospital made a preventable mistake that caused harm to you or your baby, you may have the right to take legal action.

At DP Injury Attorneys, we help families in San Diego fight for the justice and compensation they deserve, covering medical expenses, long-term care, and more. If you’re wondering whether you have a case, we’re here to provide answers and the strong legal support you need.

What is Medical Malpractice in a Birth Injury Case?

Medical malpractice happens when a doctor, nurse, or other healthcare provider fails to give a patient the level of care that a reasonably competent provider would in the same situation. In birth injury cases, that means the medical team didn’t do what they should have to keep your baby safe during labor and delivery.

Some red flags for negligence include:

• Not watching the baby’s heart rate closely enough for signs of distress
• Waiting too long to do an emergency C-section
• Misusing forceps or vacuum extractors to get the baby out
• Giving the wrong medicine or dose to mom or baby
• Not spotting and treating infections in the mother

These kinds of missteps can cause serious birth injuries like cerebral palsy, Erb’s palsy, brain damage, and more – harm that can impact your child for life.

To win a birth injury malpractice case, you’ve got to prove four key things:

1. The doctor and hospital had a duty to give you and your baby competent care.
2. They failed in that duty by not meeting the standard of care.
3. Their failure directly caused your baby’s birth injury.
4. Your baby suffered real, significant harm as a result.

Proving all this is complex, but an experienced birth injury attorney can help you build a strong case piece by piece.

What’s the Standard of Care – and How Do You Prove a Breach?

The first piece of the puzzle is showing the medical team had a duty to give you proper care. That part is usually straightforward. By taking you on as a patient, they’re saying, “We’ve got this, we know what we’re doing.” The real question is, did they drop the ball?

The standard of care is basically what a competent doctor or nurse is supposed to do in a given situation. Would a skilled provider have done something different that could’ve prevented your baby’s injury? Proving the answer is “yes” usually means bringing in expert witnesses – other doctors who can look at the records and say, “Hey, this is not how it’s supposed to go.”

Proving the Malpractice Caused Your Baby’s Injury

Showing the medical team slipped up isn’t enough. You’ve got to draw a direct line from that mistake to your baby’s birth injury. Legally, this is called causation, and it’s got two parts:

1. Cause-in-fact: Proving the injury wouldn’t have happened if the doctors and nurses had done their job right.
2. Proximate cause: Showing a competent provider could’ve foreseen that the type of mistake they made might lead to a birth injury like your baby’s.

This is where a birth injury lawsuit often gets messy. The hospital might argue your baby’s condition wasn’t their fault – that it was just bad luck or genetics or something they couldn’t control. Your birth injury lawyer will need to counter those defenses with solid expert testimony and evidence to show the harm was preventable with proper care.

Documenting the Fallout: Proving Damages in a Birth Injury Case

The last thing you need to prove is damages – all the ways your child’s birth injury has hurt them and your family. This includes stuff like:

• Past and future medical bills for your child’s care
• Costs of ongoing therapies, equipment, home modifications
• Your lost income from having to miss work to care for your child
• Your child’s pain, suffering, disability, lost opportunities

Basically, you need to show the full scope of how the birth injury has impacted your kid’s life and your family’s. Medical records, expert analysis of future needs, testimony about challenges – it’s all important to paint the complete picture.

Taking the First Step: Calling a Birth Injury Lawyer

Time is not on your side with birth injury lawsuits. There are super strict deadlines to file these cases, and if you wait too long, you lose your shot at justice.

In California, you usually have to file within 3 years of the injury or 1 year of when you discovered it – whichever comes first. If your child is under 6, you might have until their 8th birthday, but don’t bank on that. The sooner you talk to a birth injury attorney, the better.

Most reputable malpractice lawyers will review your case for free and tell you straight up if you’ve got a claim. And a lot of them work on contingency, so you don’t pay unless they recover money for you. When you talk to a lawyer, bring all your records and be ready to give them the full story.

Fight for Your Child’s Future – Speak with a Birth Injury Lawyer Today

No family should have to watch their child suffer because a doctor or hospital messed up. If your baby is facing a lifetime of challenges because of medical negligence, you deserve more than an apology. You deserve answers, you deserve justice, and you deserve the resources to give your child the best possible future.

That’s what we fight for every day at DP Injury Attorneys. We know the system, we know the tactics the other side uses to wriggle out of accountability, and we know how to build the strongest possible case for families like yours.

If your gut is telling you something went wrong at the hospital, listen to it. Talk to an experienced birth injury malpractice attorney and find out where you stand. The consultation is free, the case review is free – the only thing it’ll cost you is a little time, and the payoff for your child could be life-changing.

Don’t let the people who failed your baby off the hook. Reach out to the compassionate birth injury lawyers at DP Injury Attorneys, and let us help you fight for the justice and compensation your family deserves.