Child Brain Damage

Our catastrophic injury specialists negotiated a cash and annuity settlement worth about $5 million on behalf of an infant born with quadriparetic paralysis after doctors and nursing staff failed to monitor the mother and deliver the baby quickly when fetal heart monitors indicated severe distress. About eight hours after being admitted to the hospital, the mother presented with a fever. The doctor on call administered antibiotics and said he would check back in an hour. Nearly three hours later, fetal heart rate monitors showed a dangerous drop in the fetus’s heart rate to 85 and 90 (normal is 140), and it remained there for about 10 minutes, prompting a frightened nurse to call for a doctor. The infant was born an hour later by emergent vacuum extraction with no heart rate. An MRI showed severe hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy. The child will be totally dependent on others for all of her care her entire life. She is not expected to develop beyond the level of a 1-month-old infant. Walkup Melodia lawyers used life care specialists in pediatric rehabilitation to map out a lifetime plan of medical and attendant care.