Birth Injury Malpractice Lawsuit Lodged in Queens County Supreme Court

Accusations leveled in a recent birth injury malpractice lawsuit state that the defendants failed to provide the mother plaintiff with proper obstetric monitoring and medical treatment at the time of labor, resulting in the minor plaintiff’s permanent neurological damage. Two physicians who are licensed to practice medicine in the state of New York are named as defendants in the claim.

The complaint was filed in Queens County Supreme Court, where the plaintiffs are seeking monetary damages for alleged economic and non-economic losses. According to the lawsuit, the defendant doctors acted careless and otherwise negligent in the prenatal, perinatal and post-natal care of the mother, which continued up through her delivery in February of 2012.

Minor plaintiff suffers irreversible brain damage

The minor plaintiff incurred severe brain damage in utero, states the birth injury lawsuit, resulting in lasting neurological and cognitive problems. The infant claimant has consequently required extensive medical care, hospitalization and vocational and other therapies, and will continue to need treatments for the foreseeable future.

As detailed in the birth injury complaint, the mother presented to Jamaica Hospital with apparent vaginal hemorrhaging. The defendants did not look for the cause of the woman’s cervical bleeding, claims the lawsuit, and failed to perform a transvaginal sonogram and other tests that might have shed light on the medical urgency of the plaintiff’s condition. The baby suffered hypoxic injury ( loss of oxygen) to the brain while in the womb, which may have been prevented had the attending health care professionals ordered and performed a timely Cesarean section, argues the plaintiff.

It is alleged that the defendant physicians departed from the accepted standards of gynecological and obstetric practice by acting in negligence before and during the plaintiff’s delivery at Jamaica Hospital. Specifically, the New York claimant argues that her doctors should be held legally responsible for failing to test for and establish the cause of her cervical bleeding after the 35^th week of gestation. The case further contends that a different diagnosis should have been made, such as separation of the placenta requiring an emergency C-section.

Among several causes of action listed in the complaint involves the defendant’s alleged failure to obtain informed consent from the plaintiff in regards to the risks and hazards of Pitocin, which was administered during her labor. Pitocin is a synthetic hormone used to increase or augment a stalled labor, and while the drug has a relatively safe profile, its induced contractions are much stronger and closer together than those which are naturally occurring.

Damages sustained exceed lower court jurisdiction limits

The plaintiff is suing on three separate causes of action including: pain and suffering, informed consent and loss of society, services and companionship of her infant daughter, who is now permanently disabled.

The Queens County plaintiff is demanding judgment against the defendants on each cause of action, and asserts that medical negligence is the direct and proximate cause of her child’s irreversible brain damage, and has resulted in conscious pain and suffering. While the exact nature of the minor’s neurological trauma isn’t noted in the lawsuit, the majority of birth injury litigation alleging fetal brain damage entails later diagnoses of HIE, cerebral palsy and severe cognitive delays. Some children require physical and vocational therapy, special schooling and assistive medical equipment.