Everybody knows that doctors get sued for malpractice. In fact, doctors anticipate being sued for malpractice at least a couple of times during their careers. When you’re talking about cerebral palsy in infants, however, the attorney for birth injury may actually go after other individuals and entities if it seems that some sort of negligence played a part in the child developing this condition. It will depend upon the case and how the child was injured.
The Hospital
There are several different ways that the hospital can end up being the entity that is sued because of the child developing cerebral palsy. The hospital is responsible for providing clean facilities, proper equipment and all the other logistics that go into providing care for a mother giving birth. When they fail in this regard, they may end up being sued.
If someone who is an employee of the hospital is found to have been negligent in a way that caused the child to develop cerebral palsy, the hospital may be sued as well. Nurses and paramedics are generally employees of the hospital and going after them in a lawsuit generally involves suing the hospital rather than suing them as individuals. Doctors are sued as individuals because they are typically contractors who work at the hospital and are responsible for carrying their own malpractice insurance.
Medical Device Manufacturers
In a recent case, a particular brand of alcohol swab was found to have been infected with a bacterium that ended up causing illness in people. That bacterium and the alcohol swabs that were infected with it have been implicated in the case of cerebral palsy in an infant in Washington State. There is no direct evidence that the alcohol swab caused the infant’s cerebral palsy, but the attorneys are going after the company, alleging that those swabs and the bacteria with which they were contaminated did play a part.
Your attorney will have to determine where medical negligence occurred and who was responsible for it. Ultimately, however, the jury will be the ones who determine whether or not the claim is valid. They may decide to order the plaintiff to pay all, some or none of the award being sought. They may also opt to award damages to the child but not to the parents. It depends upon the disposition of the jury and it depends upon the merits of the claim as much as it does the ability of the attorney to argue it.