Plaintiff, a 26-year-old woman, hired one of our attorneys to sue the hospital and the attending obstetrician for the injuries suffered by her child during labor and delivery. Plaintiff signed a consent form indicating that delivery would be performed via a C-section due to the large size of the baby.
She claimed that the physician later decided that a vaginal delivery would be appropriate. The plaintiff’s attorney established that the size of the baby caused intrauterine entrapment of infant’s shoulder and that a C-section was the only appropriate choice for delivery. An expert obstetrician admitted that the attending physician should have known to perform a C-section given the weight of the baby.
As a result of the physician’s failure to perform a C-section, the child sustained permanent damage to his brachial plexus that subsequently caused Erb’s palsy of left arm. Although the defendant’s expert pediatric neurologist and obstetrician testified that the boy did not suffer any limitation of his left shoulder’s motion range, the attorney was able to link birth trauma to other implications, such as oxygen deprivation and subsequent brain damage.
Thus, the parties agreed to a $3,350,000 settlement.