Chicago Birth Injury Lawyer Blog

When our Chicago birth injury lawyers take on a new case, virtually all of the time the focus is on helping the injured child in the future. Contrary to the skewed portrayals made by those who constantly attack the justice system, these suits are not about “revenge” or “anger” or “making a quick buck.” At the end of the day, there are usually two clear purposes: (1) ensuring that the victims will actually have access to the things they need to recover from the harm they received, and (2) to ensure that steps are taken at the negligent facility to lessen the chance that a similar error will occur in the future.

Large jury awards are often scoffed at by some who don’t understand how the process works. For one thing, those awards do not occur nearly as often as is believed. But perhaps even more importantly, the actual costs of dealing with the consequences of these birth injuries over the course of a lifetime reach high figures quite easily. Families who have children suffering from conditions like cerebral palsy, for example, can readily explain the costs that are associated with the extra care that the child victim needs.

Our Illinois injury lawyers firmly believe that it is the duty of those whose errors cause such injuries to pay for the consequences of their actions. Failure to do otherwise leaves these individuals (and their families) in incredibly tight situations, often depriving them of available opportunities to improve the victim’s quality of life simply because of a lack of resources.

Perhaps nothing demonstrates this more than legal steps that are being taken on behalf of certain individual with disabilities who are fighting to have basic concerns met by state officials. For example, Oregon Live reported that the United Cerebral Palsy Association of Oregon is joining a class-action lawsuit against the state. The suit alleges that forcing these individuals with disabilities to spend their days in “sheltered workshops” where they complete rote tasks for less than minimum wage should be ended. The advocates are concerned that these programs do little to provide actual training or advancement to these community members. This ultimately may have significant effects on the individuals’ quality of life and overall well-being. One of the named plaintiff described her day as one where she sits in a room with 100 other people putting parts into boxes, folding bags, and packaging gloves. At some points the woman receives less than forty cents per hour for the work.

As this situation demonstrates, many community members will disabilities like cerebral palsy are forced to engage in complex legal battles just to receive a reasonable level of care and have basic opportunities afforded to them. It is imminently reasonable for a family to demand that the individual and institutions who caused a certain disability to ensure that the victim receives the level of care they need without being forced to scramble to receive less than acceptable treatment at the state’s expense. Our birth injury lawyers strongly believe that this comes down to basic fairness, a concept that people on all sides can understand.

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Cerebral Palsy Primer: What It Is & When It Arises

Birth Injury Lawsuit Filed After Child Born with Cerebral Palsy

Our Illinois birth injury lawyers most often deal with cases that are related to Illinois medical malpractice, where a mother and child do not receive adequate care during delivery. However, in some limited circumstances a birth injury lawsuit may be filed based on theories outside of the medical malpractice context. For example, the Boston Herald this week discussed a drawn out legal fight by a woman who claims that she was forced to give birth to her child while lying on the floor of a jail cell. The case therefore is not based entirely on inadequate care by medical professional but essentially on no care being provided as a violation of her civil rights.

The case is a drawn-out one, as the plaintiff in the suit gave birth to her child more than fourteen years ago. It was only later that she filed a federal lawsuit claiming that those around her refused to believe her protestations that she was pregnant. Instead, jail guards dismissed her claims as ramblings by a mentally ill woman.

The woman ended up in the jail cell in 1997 because she was arrested for sleeping on a bench at a Metro bus stop. The woman admittedly had mental problems at the time of the incident. The lawsuit that was filed claims that health officials at the jail noted that she was in the advanced stages of pregnancy but they did nothing to account for her condition. Instead she was apparently put in a jail cell and left there for six days. It wasn’t until the woman actually gave birth to the child on the floor of the cell that a guard heard the newborn’s cries and called for help.

In responding to the allegations, the state’s jail-practices expert noted that the guards likely acted in the way that they did because they did not believe the woman’s claims because of her mental illness. However, the woman’s plaintiff attorney alleges that anyone could have known that the woman was pregnant simply by looking at her.

The lawsuit does include some allegations of medical malpractice—on the part of the jail health officials—but it also includes claims of basic negligence and civil rights violations for the overall way that the woman was treated. In addition, the suit makes claims that the tragic situation in this case was part of a pattern of behavior at the facility which has found that life-threatening deficiencies in medical caregiving to jail inmates was a routine occurrence. It is alleged that routine medical screenings were simply discontinued if the inmate was uncooperative, which led to the troubling situation here. The victim was uncooperative as a result of her mental illness which produces delusions and makes it difficult for her to care for herself.

The victim’s mental condition is sporadic, as she has moments of clarity before falling back into debilitating delusions. On another occasion, while in a 23-hour lockdown in the jail’s psychiatric ward, the victim allegedly told a nurse that she was pregnant and worried about her baby. However, the nurse explained that she thought the woman was lying “in order to get an extra sandwich.”

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Woman Sues Sheriff for Treatment During Birth

Trial Begins in Lawsuit Where Inmate Gave Birth Alone in Cell

Discussion about the merits, drawbacks, and concerns related to C-section births continues across the blogosphere this week. Yesterday the chairman of the Department of Medicine at Cedars-Sinai wrote an editorial in the Huffington Post reiterating the risks of C-section births, particularly for those mothers who have already had one performed. Our Chicago birth injury attorneys have long been attuned to these concerns. It is vital that medical caregivers (and expectant mothers) take heed of these warning to ultimately ensure potential complications during delivery and birth injuries are minimized.

The doctor explained that C-section births currently account for just short of 33% of all births in the United States. The number has been rising over the years, but it remained steady for the first time ever in the last two years. While the stall in the increase is encouraging, much more work needs to be done to get the level down to that where it is performed only when absolutely necessary. To keep this decades-long problem into perspective, in 1970 the rate of C-section birth was only 5%. This increase is a problem because, as the chairmen of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Cedars-Sinai noted, “despite the rise in the number of C-sections, there is no evidence that it has improved the health of mothers or babies.” In fact, as our birth injury lawyers have pointed out recently, there has been an increase in the number of maternal deaths in recent years.

After noting that there are many different reasons for the increase, one disturbing factor is that there has been a shortage of vaginal births after C-sections. These procedures, known as VBACs, have lost fashion in the medical community under the idea that “once a C-section, always a C-section.” Right now only 8% of the women who have had a C-section once give birth vaginally afterwards. C-section births are inherently more risky than vaginal births, because they come with the potential for surgical complications otherwise not present in vaginal births.

The story’s author notes that those VBAC rates are far lower than they need to be. Those medical facilities that prioritize VBACs have been able to safely increase the rate from 8% to 35%. In the past research has suggested that there are increased risks of certain birth injuries (such as uterine rupture) when woman have VBACs. Obviously those concerns must be taken into account. However, newer research from the American College of Gynecologists and Obstetricians release new information which explained that better identification of risk factors among VBAC candidates can allow those risks to be eliminated.

Interestingly recent expert panels have explained that those who go through labor after a C-section have a decreased risk of maternal death. This is true whether one continues through with the vaginal birth or whether a C-section is ultimately required. At the end of the story the doctor notes that a C-section “remains a major surgery with major risks.” Therefore pregnant woman should fully explore all of their options with talking with doctors about how they’d like to proceed.

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Dramatic Rise in Cesarean Births

Report Finds Recent Rise in C-Section Births

In the eyes of many, “tort reform” is thought of as a synonym for damage caps. It is true that arbitrary limits on damages are the most common and well-known aspect of most tort reform efforts. However, as any medical malpractice lawyer can attest, the other aspects of tort reform can be just as harmful to the rights of injury victims of all kinds. Damage caps affect plaintiffs after a favorable verdict has been announced. Other tort reform efforts seek to strike at plaintiffs even before that point, namely when the lawsuit is being filed and when the arguments are being presented to a jury.

Many tort reform packages proposed by legislators impose a combination of ideas, all of which work to the disadvantage of injury victims and the advantage of big companies and insurance interests. However, as each Chicago birth injury attorney at our firm typically argues, all of these efforts are absolutely unnecessary and virtually all clearly violate various constitutional protections. Constitutions divide power among three branches of government for a reason, because a separation of powers is deemed fundamental to our system of governance, at both the state and national levels. The judiciary is charged with interpreting laws and implementing a system to actually adjudicate disputes. When the legislative body seeks to encroach on that function, the effort has to be stopped. All forms of medical malpractice “reform” are unnecessary and unconstitutional encroachments into the sphere of the judiciary.

That is exactly what one state court recently determined when it struck down a tort reform provision. The Arkansas Supreme Court ruled last week that narrow requirements about who is allowed to testify in medical malpractice cases constituted an unconstitutional violation of the separation of powers doctrine. The particular provision in question allowed only those doctors who were of the exact same specialty as the defendant to testify in these cases. This had proven to be particularly burdensome, because some courts (and defense attorneys) used the law essentially as a loop-hole to get meritorious claims thrown out of court. It is often very difficult to get an expert witness with the exact same credentials to testify, and there is ambiguity concerning the degree of similarity sufficient to meet the law’s demand.

Fortunately, the high court in this state rightly identified that it is not the business of the legislature to make blanket requirements on the witnesses necessary to allow a legal matter to move forward. The functioning of the court system in this regard must be left to the courts themselves.

In any event, it is clear that this law—and others like it—are pushed not for their fairness, but as yet another way for big interests, like the medical lobby and insurance companies, to keep more money in their pockets. The whole point of a jury system and adversarial trial process is to root out truth. The expertise of medical witness clearly plays a role in that process. But, if an expert truly is not capable of speaking intelligently on a topic, then that weakness can be fully exploited by a defense attorney when explaining to a jury why the expert’s analysis is incorrect. There is no logical reason to cut the process off beforehand and not even allow that witness to testify. But tort reform efforts are not about logic. Instead, they are based on chronic defendant’s desire to have shortcuts to avoid having to defend themselves altogether, even when their actions cause significant injury to others.

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State Court Throws Our Medical Expert Testimony Limitation in “Tort Reform” Law

Judicial “Hellhole” Report is a PR Stunt

The rise in C-section births continues to raise alarm bells among all those interested in preventing Illinois birth injuries. Our Chicago birth injury lawyers know that it can be a tricky issue, because there are times when the surgical birth is absolutely necessary to save the life of a child or mother. However, the fact that they are necessary some of the time does not at all mean that they are safer all of the time. The truth is that on the whole these surgical births are far riskier than natural childbirth, and they should not be undertaken when not necessary.

Yet, there seems to be a notion that cesarean section births are simply one choice that mothers can make without much effect on medical risks one way or another. As we reported last week, the shockingly high maternal mortality rate in the United States is likely caused in part by the rising use of C-section birth—upwards of 50% of all births in some locations.

Interestingly, a new study summarized in Top News found that doctors likely bear much of the blame for the rise in C-section use. Some had previously argued that the rise was likely due to mothers who wanted to avoid the pain of childbirth and instead go with the “easier” C-section option. But the results of a new study found that not to be the case. The research included analysis of the births for 22,000 women over a two year period. Researchers found that more than half of those who had cesarean section births did so because their doctors told them to, not because they preferred it to natural childbirth.

This raises a range of questions about what exactly is leading doctors to push for more C-section births.

Of course, any Chicago medical malpractice lawyer knows that the finger will first point to medical malpractice lawsuits. As is usually the case, some in the medical community try to tie any and all problems with the medical system back to groups not actually in the medical community—namely lawyers. Finger pointing is nothing new when it comes to certain industry’s shifting blame, but it particularly damaging here because lives are on the line.

Lawyers are not in the delivery rooms and have zero influence on what happens in any individual case. Instead, in each case lawyers are only involved the fact when a patient has been hurt because they received treatment below a reasonable level of care. That standard of care is based on what other prudent practitioners would do when faced with the similar circumstances. Obviously there are no rules that dictate whether or not one is immune from liability because they perform a c-section birth. Instead, the law is simply asks doctors to act in reasonable ways considering the information that is in front of them. Sometimes that might be to encourage a c-section, at other time it might not be. In most cases the decision will involve the weighing of the risks with the potential benefits. There is no inherent reason why this weighing of the factors should be skewed by the civil justice system and force doctors to make poor decisions when it comes to advising on c-section risks.

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Dramatic Rise in Cesarean Births

Report Finds Recent Rise in C-Section Births

Many community members may not understand that certain well-known birth injuries, like cerebral palsy, actually refer to a series of potential conditions. Cerebral palsy is actually a category of injuries that commonly refer to problems affecting one’s movements, posture, balance, cognitive development, and other nervous system functions. Each of these problems can arise in varying degrees, often because of developmental disabilities or through oxygen problems to the child’s brain during its delivery. When the problem was caused by oxygen deprivation during the delivery, it may have actually resulted from negligent conduct on the part of those providing the care. If that is the case, then our Chicago birth injury lawyers know that those involved can be held liable for the misconduct. Those parties are then rightfully required to provide compensation for the losses suffered by those involved.

Families who file these suits do so because they want to ensure that their child has access to all possible resources that will allow them to reach their full potential. Of course children with cerebral palsy will face many challenges in their lives that other children might not face, but that does not mean that cerebral palsy victims do not have the same opportunity to learn, grow, and thrive as others. Having access to the specialized resources necessary to reach their potential, however, is something with which many families struggle. It is always heart-breaking to see a child who is not able to grow as much as possible because they are not receiving the one-on-one specialized care necessary for their full development.

A Fox News article this week discussed the special education needs of those with cerebral palsy. Because cerebral palsy actually refers to a group of disorders and the overall disability of victims vary along a spectrum, the education needs of children with cerebral palsy are quite varied. Some children with milder symptoms are able to be educated in a general education classroom while others require special classroom assistance.

No matter what the case, education experts explain that all of a child’s symptoms need to be addressed cohesively. That means that occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech therapy, and other early intervention services must be accounted for on top of regular classroom learning. All of it works to strengthen the child’s motor and communication skills (on top of academics). Coupled with that, many communities have found it incredibly helpful to also work on building up a child’s self-care and daily living skills. Independence is always an issue with many cerebral palsy victims, and so all steps that may help a child be able to live more fully on their own are positive.

Our Chicago birth injury attorneys are well aware that properly providing this care is not cheap. Even things like the design and structure of a physical classroom must be accounted for when considering this type of education. The child’s motor skills need to be kept in mind with these educational spaces so that they are able to move about freely without being exposed to certain safety risks. Thing like modified pencils and paper, communication aids, and similar devices are also often necessary to ensure that the child is given as good as chance as possible to grow academically.

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Cerebral Palsy Primer: What It Is & When It Arises

Birth Injury Lawsuit Filed After Child Born with Cerebral Palsy

The News-Register published a disturbing story this week which suggests that birth injuries are more likely to strike mothers in the United States than in most other places in the western world. The Illinois birth injury lawyers at our firm have often discussed how even though the term birth injuries usually refers to harm to a child, they can also include harm that mother’s experience during delivery. When that harm is preventable, then a birth injury lawsuit may be appropriate.

The News-Register story discusses the surprising fact that, even with our apparent advances in technology, women in the United States are more likely to die during childbirth than nearly every other developed country. Some of the overall stats are downright shocking. Worldwide, maternal mortality declined almost everywhere over the last twenty years. However, in the United States they doubled.

How could this be?

Many experts are actually pointing the finger at technological intervention in births which can be more dangerous than natural childbirth . For example, while delivering a child via cesarean section may be convenient for the doctors or the family, these surgical births often have more risks than regular births. This is why our Chicago birth injury lawyers have blogged frequently on the troubling rise in cesarean birth rates. More than one third of all births in the U.S. are delivered surgically. This is shocking, because surgical births should actually only be performed when necessary in certain emergency or high-risk situations. A midwife interviewed for the story explained, “Cesarean section is meant to be sort of a last resort, when there’s no way the baby is going to be born alive otherwise or the mother’s or baby’s life will be endangered.”

Interestingly, some also claim that the increase in C-section rates can be tied to unnecessary excesses in fetal monitoring. In theory the monitoring is suppose to allow the doctor to measure the baby’s health throughout the birthing process. However, some evidence suggests that the monitoring actually does not improve delivers. Instead it may cause doctors to panic and order unnecessary c-sections which then have the increased potential to harm the mother.

Beyond cesarean section rates, experts also believe that lack of access to health care is also part of the problem. When pregnant women do not receive proper pre-natal care or have familiarity with certain medical teams during delivery, then the chance of potentially deadly consequences rise. The problem is most stark when it comes to post-partum care—in the days and weeks after the birth. More than half (55%) of all maternal death occur more than 24 hours after the birth.

Finally, the rising age and obesity of mothers is a factor in the maternal death rates. Complications during birth are always more likely when a mother is older or is herself in poor health during the birth. However, our birth injury attorneys know that these factors do not necessarily remove all potential liability for a medical professional if they fail to act reasonably during the delivery. In other words, mothers who are older or have other health problems should not automatically assume that any problem they experience during the delivery was a result of their own situation and not other potential errors.

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Dramatic Rise in Cesarean Births

Report Finds Recent Rise in C-Section Births

It seems that every day bring new information about birth injuries—preventing them, treating them, and everything in between. For example, just this week the Yale Daily News discussed a new effort at the university which uncovered more information about how and when neural circuits between the brain and the eyes are created in a developing child.

Specifically, as reported in last month’s Nature Neuroscience, a research team has found that activity inside the womb actually affects the development of the neural wiring between the eyes of brain of the fetus. Essentially, using newborn mice, scientists discovered that even the closed eyes of an unborn can produce message which are then sent to the brain to help ensure that the wiring system between the eyes and brain develop properly.

This is big news, because while this sort of early development was previously speculated, it is the first time that researchers had been able to actually manipulate the temporal patterns of eyes in vivo and analyzed the brain wiring effect. Previously medical professionals assumed that the child was born, exposed to the environment, and then that exposure influenced the neural activity in the brain. But now we know that it occurs earlier. Scientists believe this may ultimately prove to have implications for preventing problems like autism, which may be caused by “miswiring” in the brain.

In addition, the development process is thought to be similar for other parts of neural circuit, including the spinal cord. What this means is that activity within the womb actually affects more parts of the child’ brain development than previously thought.

Our Chicago birth injury attorney follows all of these developments in research because down the road they may influence birth injury lawsuits in a variety of ways. Here are two…

1) The more we know about how injuries develop and what can be done to prevent them, the standard of what constitutes “reasonable” behavior by medical professionals changes. Most birth injury lawsuits are essentially medical malpractice lawsuits where negligence is alleged. The victims are seeking redress because a medical professional who owed them a reasonable duty of care breached that duty and caused harm. When trying to prove what constitutes a “reasonable” care, lawyers are forced to show what other doctors would have done in the same situation based on commonly understood medical knowledge and practices. Those practice and that knowledge changes as new advance in medicine are made. Consequently the arguments about whether a breach did or did not occur are also altered.

2) In addition, besides allowing medical professionals to prevent injuries in more situations, advances in medicine also lead to better treatment options for victims. In this way the research may play a role in what damages are asked for and awarded following one of these cases. How much a victim receives in a case is influenced, in part, by the costs associated with their long term care and the permanent harm that the injury has caused them. Both of those things can be affected by improved treatments options for victims. Injuries that were previously permanent may no longer be permanent. Also, families may also want resources so that they can pursue treatment option that were previously unavailable.

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New Research Gives Hope to Those Seeking Cerebral Palsy Prevention

As we discussed earlier this week the most common Illinois birth injuries are those that involve brain damage and those caused by the application of excessive force during delivery. In many ways brain injuries are perhaps the most severe type of birth injury, because they ultimately limit the mental development of a child indefinitely. Excessive force often causes nerve damage that may result in children not be able to use limbs properly or at all. However, brain injuries often deprive children of their ability to create memories, learn properly, communicate, and otherwise become fully integrated into society. Of course that is not to say that injuries like shoulder dytocia and brachial plexus injuries are not severe or necessary of full redress. They are always incredibly tragic and our Chicago birth injury lawyers have worked with many families whose children have developed these injuries because of the negligence of others. But at the end of the day there are certain physical injuries that are more easily compensated for than mental injuries.

However debating distinctions between brain injuries and other physical birth injuries is often academic, because in many cases children actually suffer both problems. For example, when the baby’s shoulder gets caught behind the mother’s pelvis (shoulder dystocia), if not attended to, the child can suffer oxygen deprivation to the brain. Missteps by the doctor often means that the child both suffers brain damage as well as experiences nerve damage which may results in Erb’s or Klempke’s Palsy. Erb’s and Klumpke Palsy are conditions related to the weakness or paralysis of the arm. When the brachial plexus nerve bundle is damaged then the child may lose feeling or movement in their arm. The nerve bundle is located near the neck and upper arm.

While these physical injuries are tough for families to deal with, the situation is made much worse when combined with a brain injury. Newborn brain injuries often result from too much shifting of the skull while in the birth canal. Excessive movement results in pressure being applied to the sensitive tissues of the child’s brain, causing trauma and potential lifelong injury.

In addition, perhaps the most common infant brain injuries are those caused by oxygen deprivation or disruption of the blood supply to the brain. Oxygen deprivation, known as asphyxia, can cause damage to certain parts of the brain—damage that can never be repaired. Sometime this deprivation is caused by a genetic condition that cannot be guarded against.

However, in many case oxygen deprivation can be traced back to medical malpractice. Sometimes it is caused by the inadequate monitoring of the child’s vital signs. When that occurs doctors often fail to act quickly enough to relieve stress to the child. Their delay in acting fast results in permanent brain damage that otherwise might have been prevented had the medical professionals responded quickly. At other times the doctors fail to take note of the position of the umbilical cord at all parts of the delivery. The cord can cause asphyxia.

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Birth Injuries Often Have Lifelong Consequences

The side that begins making the most outrageous arguments and using inflammatory language in any public debate is usually the one whose position is rooted on shakier ground. Each Chicago medical malpractice lawyer at our firm knows that the principle is certainly true when it comes to the tort reform debate. If one listens close enough, virtually every problem facing the country can be traced back to things like birth injury lawsuits and other situations where a wronged party tries to use the civil justice system to seek redress and accountability against their wrongdoer.

The exaggeration is perhaps most evident locally in the so-called “Judicial Hellhole” report recycled each year in order to stir up controversy and make ridiculous claims about the long-term effect of fair access to the civil just system in our state. As the Jerry Latherow, the president of the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association, noted in a recent editorial published by the State Journal-Register, this latest report is best thought of as a mere publicity stunt.

For one thing the report makes extreme claims about the harms that have befallen our state because our citizens can use the court system to seek redress for their losses. On one level the claims are outrageous from the outset, because the truth is that there are many more cases of businesses suing other businesses than there are of individuals suing businesses. Illinois injury victims do use the justice system to hold negligent parties responsible for their conduct, but businesses use it much more frequently as part of their efforts to bring down competitors. Any discussion of the role of the justice system that does not address this undeniable fact is suspect from the beginning.

On top of that, the actual claims made about the effects of access to justice are supremely misguided. For example, the report claims that our state is losing jobs because of the civil justice system. Considering that we are still recovering from a Great Recession and many are still struggling to find work, this argument is sure to make headlines. However, is it based on fact? Definitely not. A recent survey of actual business owners from the National Federation of Independent Businesses found that taxes, energy costs, and availability of labor were the prime motivators for deciding where to set up shop, expand a business, and ultimately create jobs. Fear of lawsuits did not even make the list.

The results of the business survey are not surprising to our Chicago medical malpractice lawyers, because we work in this area and known first-hand that the claims made by tort reformers simply do not mesh with reality. There are already many safeguards in place to screen out the very few frivolous lawsuits that are filed. Pleadings standards, the cost of actually taking on a case, and many other factors simply make it ineffective to file suits unless there are very real questions about the harm caused to an individual because of negligence. The only reason that tort reforms try to make the claim otherwise is because doing so makes it seem as if there is a need for laws which take away access to the court system.

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Frequent readers of this blog (or those familiar with birth injuries) have likely noticed that there are common trends when it comes to the types of injuries at the root of Illinois birth injury lawsuits. While new children can suffer an enormous range of problem at birth, lawsuits connected to those problems are usually rooted in a few injuries time and again. This is because birth injury lawsuits are filed based on the conduct involved, not the injury caused. There are acts of negligence that cause the same types of harm again and again—pulling too hard on a child in the birth canal or failing to order an emergency C-section when fetal distress is uncovered.

Our Chicago birth injury lawyers know that those particular acts of negligence are likely to result in a select few types of injuries. Those include shoulder dystocia, a brachial plexus injury, cerebral palsy, and a few other hams. While not all preventable injuries fall into those categories and not all incidents of these problems were necessarily caused by negligent care, the development of one of those select few injuries is often a red flag necessitating more inquiry. Unfortunately, much work still needs to be done to ensure that all possible steps are taken by medical professionals to ensure proper care is provided 100% of the time and that all injuries which can be prevented are prevented.

When mistakes are made, birth injury lawsuits fill in the gaps. They provide added incentive for involved medical facilities to enact changes to improve care in the future, and they provide the resources that the victim will need to deal with the consequences of the harm throughout their lives. For example, US Politics Today published a story this weekend about the end of a jury trial following a birth injury. In that case, the victim was a girl whose doctors pulled too hard during her delivery. Even though the child was in relatively good health during the delivery, the doctor chose to utilize a vacuum delivery. Then, when the girl’s arm became caught behind her mother’s pelvic bone, the doctor pulled down on the girl’s head. This resulted in ripping and rupturing in the nerves of the girl’s left shoulder. This injury is known as shoulder dystocia.

If common practices were followed the doctor would have manipulated the mother’s legs or applied pressure to the pelvic area. It is well-known that applying pressure to the infant’s head is unnecessary and risks injuries just like the one that resulted. As a result of the error the girl has severe and likely permanent arm damage. It is unclear if therapy will be able to provide any functional use of the arm. Problems such as this usually delay the advancement of fine motor skills in developing children. This is, of course, on top of the social stigma that always faces children who are different.

In this case, the jury at the birth injury trial found that the medical professional was negligent. They awarded the family $1.8 million for medical bills, lost wages, pain and suffering, and other damages. A large part of the money will be used for extensive surgeries that the girl is expected to need to try to help restore some of the lost movement in her arm.

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Family Awarded $4.5 Million Following Birth Injury Lawsuit

Family Receives $1.5M Settlement for Birth Injury/Wrongful Death Lawsuit

It is easy for a Chicago medical malpractice attorney to get dismayed by the fact that so many community members get their basic information about Illinois medical malpractice lawsuits from those on one side of the tort reform debate. Instead of honest discussion or information sharing about what these lawsuits do and how they work, many residents instead get skewed information from those providing the information to gain support for a very specific political agenda. There is simply no way to trust the figures provided by tort reform groups—their data is inaccurate, distorted, or presented misleadingly. Yet, those inaccuracies are often permeated throughout the public, unfairly influencing the public opinion on tort reform issues.

Each Chicago birth injury lawyer at our firm genuinely believes that if the public actually had accurate information about the justice system they would be able to see much more clearly how those in the insurance industry and medical lobby are using the debate to advance ideas for their personal interests—not the overall good of the community. Along the same lines, the “Pop Tort” blog—published by the Center for Justice and Democracy—had a post this week entitled “Take Our Medical Malpractice Lawsuit Quiz!” The short three-page quiz is a handy way to show how the perceptions about the civil justice system are often wildly inaccurate, usually because of misinformation propagated by tort reformers.

Question One asks what percentage of case filing are actual medical malpractice suits. Considering the attention always focused on these particular cases (of which birth injury lawsuits are a subset), many believe that medical malpractice cases constitute a large chunk. The truth is that medical malpractice cases constitute less than 2% of all new civil cases. When looking just at tort suits the numbers don’t rise that much higher as medical malpractice cases are less than 8% of all tort cases. In other words, most suits are about other incidents, but medical malpractice cases always get the attention.

Question Two speaks to the trends with these lawsuits. Listening to tort reformers one might get the impression that these cases continue to rise in “epidemic-like” proportions. What is the truth? Over the last decade medical malpractice lawsuits have actually dropped by nearly 20%. In some states the filings have decreased dramatically, down 42% in some areas. There is no epidemic of medical malpractice suits. On the contrary, many victims are finding it harder and harder to get access to the system when they are hurt in this way.

Finally, Question Three asks what percentage of an award does a hospital or insurer usually pay following a large jury verdict. The answer often, is only 5-10%. This is a tricky issue that works to further confuse the public. One of the main ways that community members hear about medical malpractice is following large jury verdicts. However, in many cases, even after the jury award, the involved doctors and insurers rarely paid anything close to the actual amount. In the largest cases the victims actually receive anywhere from 5-10% of the award. The public is rarely informed of that, so they often go on believing that the stated jury amount is handed over instantly to the victims. Not so.

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