We Are Here For Your Family
There is nothing more exciting than the anticipated arrival of a newborn. You get the baby’s room ready. Make sure you have a crib and car seat. Family and friends pitch in. You have hopes and dreams for their future–sports, education, successful career, and more. Then, in the blink of an eye, your hopes and dreams are destroyed. Someone on the labor and delivery team fails to provide appropriate care resulting in life-altering injuries to, or death of, the baby.
Similarly, the mother can suffer devastating complications. Most injuries to the mother, such as tearing of the perineum, are common in childbirth. Other injuries, such as blood loss, sepsis, shock, and delayed treatment, can lead to devastating complications that threaten the life of the mother.
When faced with catastrophic consequences like these, you need a birth injury lawyer who understands and can help you.
Here Are Some Frequently Asked Questions About Birth Injuries:
How Can a Birth Injury Attorney Help Me?
There are many personal, financial, and legal hurdles a family faces when their child suffers a birth injury. In the immediate aftermath of the injury, you should focus on your family and yourself. A birth injury attorney can take the legal issues off your plate.
Gage Mathers Law Group team will focus on:
- Help you pursue compensation: Children living with a birth injury may require expensive medical treatment throughout their lives. If you have a case, we will fight to get you the money you need to provide for your child. This could include making sure your child has adaptive equipment, nursing care, and funds to pay for other helpful therapies.
- Investigate your claim: Birth injury cases can take months or years to properly develop. This can be frustrating, but it is necessary to make sure the right experts are on board. The time is also necessary because you only get one shot at making a claim so it needs to be done right–most times it takes years to know the true nature of your child’s injuries and determine lifetime needs.
- Provide guidance throughout the process: Despite working on a contingency basis, meaning you pay nothing unless your claim successfully results in compensation, our team will be with you every step of the way. Even if it takes years.
What Types of Cases Do Birth Injury Lawyers Take?
Temporary birth injuries and ones that do not have serious consequences, generally, are not taken by birth injury lawyers. Because these cases are time consuming, and often cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to pursue, birth injury attorneys usually require catastrophic or life-altering injuries.
Examples of typical birth injuries in birth in jury cases include:
- Cerebral palsy
- Brachial plexus injury
- Brain injury, including hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy (HIE)
- Broken bones
- Erb’s palsy
- Meconium aspiration syndrome
- Necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC)
- Nerve injury or damage
- Preeclampsia
- Skull fracture
- Spinal cord injury
Why Do Birth Injuries Occur?
Many birth injuries are preventable. Despite recent news stories, modern medicine has made pregnancy and delivery safer for both mother and baby. In fact, the technology and tests currently available to health care providers should make most birth injuries a thing of the past. Unfortunately, these great resources are useless if not properly used. For example, a doctor’s judgment is no better than the information they are given. If the nurses or other providers do not relay concerns from fetal heart monitoring or escalating blood pressure in a timely manner, the doctor cannot make good decisions to protect the baby or its mother. Similarly, if the doctor ignores certain key details about the condition of the mom or baby, including prenatal events leading up to labor, then their judgment might be flawed.
Examples of birth injury medical errors include:
- Failing to monitor the mother or baby before, during, and after birth.
- Missing or ignoring signs of an impending medical issue.
- Failing to communicate concerning signs and symptoms in a timely manner.
- Delaying or failing to recommend a c-section in difficult or at-risk labor.
- Failing to diagnose an infection in the mother or baby.
- Improperly administering medications or anesthesia, like an epidural.
- Improperly using forceps or vacuum extractors during delivery.
- Using excessive force to deliver the baby.
- Failing to properly resuscitate a baby after delivery.
How Much Does it Cost to Hire a Birth Injury Lawyer?
It should not cost you anything to hire a birth injury lawyer. You and your family already have enough to worry about. Birth injury lawyers, like Gage Mathers Law Group, work on a contingency fee basis, which means there no upfront fees or costs. We only get paid if your case is successful.
How Long Do I Have to Contact a Birth Injury Lawyer?
There are two factors impacting how long you have to contact a birth injury lawyer: (1) the statute of limitation, and (2) preserving evidence. When it comes to the statute of limitations, there are two deadlines for your claim. If the injury victim is 18 years old or older, their claim must be brought within two years of the injury causing event (e.g., claims by mom or dad). If the claim focuses solely on the baby’s injuries, then you have until the baby turns 20 years old to file a lawsuit. However, if the claim involves a government entity or employee of one, then there are deadlines that arise only 180 days after the injurious event.
However, the second factor, preserving evidence, overrides these deadlines and supports contacting a birth injury lawyer as soon as possible. Memories fade and factual details blur together months and years after an event. Hiring a lawyer early can help ensure key pieces of evidence are preserved in a timely manner.
Don’t wait.
How Much is My Birth Injury Case Worth?
Every case is different so it is difficult to predict what your case may be worth. Experienced birth injury lawyers will use experts to determine future costs of care for your child, which significantly influences your case value.
Birth injury compensation usually focuses on providing your family with enough money to cover the extensive medical expenses involved in raising a child with disabilities, as well as the supporting your child throughout their life. Compensation may also be provided to mothers who are injured due to negligence during childbirth.
Birth injury compensation can include compensation for:
- Home adaptations, aids, and equipment, including necessary physical modifications to the home.
- Past and future medical care, like specialist consultations, medications, surgical interventions, and other treatments associated with the immediate and long-term management of the injury;
- Physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, and other rehabilitative services;
- Family counseling and psychological services;
- Vehicle modifications to make transportation easier;
- Potential lost earnings from a career; and
- Non-economic damages like the loss of enjoyment of life, pain and suffering, disfigurement, and interruption with the normal parent-child relationship.
Birth Injuries Cause Major Challenges For New Parents
Parents of children with birth injuries are in a difficult position. Caring for their child is an expensive and full-time job. It does not leave time for much else. Parents focus on caring for their child and often rely on their health care providers to tell them what happened. They do not have the time or medical knowledge to independently investigate why their child has unexpected physical or mental injuries. It is an overwhelming situation.
Our team at Gage Mathers has practiced personal injury cases related to medical negligence and carelessness for decades. We know how to investigate your case to obtain maximum compensation for your family’s suffering.
Justice For Your Child’s Injury
Nothing is more challenging than knowing that your child suffered or continues to suffer due to the negligence of the medical professionals that you trusted. Medical costs will mount and become burdensome.
Experienced medical malpractice attorneys can take some of the burdens off parents. We can often point you to resources to help alleviate some of the stress and anxiety. And, where we are most helpful is investigating your case.
Experienced Medical Litigation Experts
We Can Be A Valuable Asset During A Tough Time
By contacting us as soon as possible, we can help you determine if your child was injured by a preventable medical error. We have access to medical experts in various specialties to investigate the cause of your child’s problems. Call our experienced birth injury lawyers now to start an investigation and pursue justice. Reach our Phoenix office at (602) 258-0646 or connect with us online.
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