Some babies are born with complications that no doctor could have predicted or prevented. That’s real. But a significant portion of birth injuries, the ones that alter a child’s entire life trajectory, weren’t inevitable. They happened because someone made a mistake during labor and delivery, missed a warning sign, delayed a decision, or failed to act on information that was right in front of them.
A birth injury is not the same as a birth defect; birth defects are often genetic or developmental, while birth injuries may result from problems during labor, delivery, or immediate post-delivery care.
Parents are often told it was just “one of those things.” And sometimes they believe it, because they’re exhausted, grieving, and in no position to challenge a doctor’s explanation during the worst days of their lives. What they don’t always know is that the medical records tell a detailed story — and a qualified birth injury attorney knows exactly what to look for in it.
Goldman Daszkal & Stallone is a personal injury law firm based in Deerfield Beach, Florida, with more than 34 years of experience and over 5,000 successful cases behind them. Joseph Stallone and the team there have seen what preventable birth injuries do to families, and they fight to hold the responsible parties accountable. This article walks through what that process actually looks like, from the first call to the questions that determine whether a birth injury case is worth pursuing.
Common Types of Birth Injuries and Their Long-Term Consequences
Birth injuries aren’t one single thing. Some involve brain damage that results from a lack of oxygen to the baby at birth, while others result in nerve damage following a forceps or vacuum extraction. Fractures can happen. Brachial plexus injuries, often called Erb’s palsy, can disable a child’s arm for the rest of their life. And still others involve hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy, which affects a child’s overall cognitive and neurological functioning but isn’t always immediately apparent.
Of course, not every difficult birth leads to a lawsuit, and not every injury results from medical error. Still, a large share of the most severe birth injuries were avoidable. Data from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality shows birth injury rates vary widely by hospital and region — a strong sign that provider practices, not just chance, drive outcomes.
When is an otherwise unfortunate birth injury something that a parent or guardian should actually consider suing over? When the standard of care was not followed.
When a Birth Injury Becomes Medical Malpractice
In any potential birth injury case, the phrase standard of care may appear over and over again. This is a measure, both legal and medical, of how a skilled or average physician or midwife should respond in the same situation. They aren’t expected to do better than that, or even perfectly. But their training and experience should have allowed them to do at least that.
In an obstetrics, delivery, and post-delivery setting, this can include the monitoring of fetal heart rates. Were they correctly read? Were the appropriate steps taken when it looked like a distress situation might arise? If a C-section became necessary, was it performed in a timely manner? Were the correct dosages used for the medication being administered? When a shoulder dystocia event occurred, were the right steps taken to handle the emergency?
And when a baby’s birth injury occurs due to a lapse in one of those standards, that’s when it becomes medical malpractice. At Goldman Daszkal & Stallone, the team turns to medical experts who can assess a birth injury case and determine whether an injury occurred as a result of proper care or improper care.
How a Birth Injury Attorney Investigates Medical Records
Records. All of them. Not just those a parent might have been given upon delivery, or even just what the mother brought back when she was discharged from the hospital. This includes prenatal checkups, labor and delivery notes, fetal heart tracings, and any imaging or lab tests performed during or after delivery. These are often needed for both the hospital and the infant to ensure that all of the right actions were being taken at all times, and that the baby was not harmed by the actions that medical professionals were taking.
Those documents often reveal the timeline of what happened and whether critical warning signs were missed. They reveal where the relevant information was being recorded, what time calls were made, and when and how long the interval lasted between the initial occurrence of a birth emergency and someone actually doing something about it. Those intervals are often critical to the outcome of a birth injury.
Most birth injuries have medical records with many abbreviations and shorthand, and fetal heart tracing charts that run page after page. A birth injury may seem uneventful unless a parent can find the signs in those charts. And only someone with experience and knowledge of such cases is capable of knowing what to look for. That distinction is significant.
The Questions That Determine Whether You Have a Birth Injury Claim
When records and medical experts get involved, the questions then come down to:
- Was the standard of care not met, whether by the delivering doctor, nurse, hospital, or a combination?
- Was the baby’s injury due to that breach of the standard of care, or would it have happened anyway?
- Is the injury something real and provable?
It is common for people not to realize that a birth injury case involves something beyond the occurrence of an injury. A delivery case must have a result, meaning permanent brain damage, nerve injury, or developmental delay from lack of oxygen during birth, beyond just a hard delivery.
When those questions align, it is time to identify where liability may exist.
Who Can Be Held Liable for a Birth Injury During Labor and Delivery?
This is where families are typically surprised. The delivering physician is not always liable, and the claim might fall upon any of the following:
- The hospital, if the environment was responsible, such as a lack of staffing, lack of equipment, or lack of policy for handling an adverse event.
- Nursing staff, for not escalating the problem, for lack of monitoring, or for missing and fraudulent records.
- The obstetrician, if the decision-making during delivery failed to meet standards.
- The anesthesiologist, if there was a problem with the epidural or anesthesia.
Sometimes a case is about many failures occurring at once. A birth injury claim may be brought against multiple people, each responsible for their own failure. That is the kind of case Goldman Daszkal & Stallone handles, where there may be many layers and issues.
Birth Injury Damages: Medical Costs, Therapy, and Future Care
The word damages may make some people think of medical bills, and of course those are part of it. But the financial impact extends well beyond when the child is discharged from the NICU. For example, a child who is permanently brain-damaged may have expenses for:
- Future medical needs
- Ongoing physical therapy and other treatment
- Special education
- Home renovations to accommodate a disability
- Lost future income (lost wages for the child as an adult)
- Pain and suffering and loss of normal life
- Suffering on the part of the family
The damages add up quickly, which is why these cases are both complex and high-value. Because of that, insurance companies and hospital risk managers rarely settle these cases easily. A firm like Goldman Daszkal & Stallone, with over $500 million in aggregate settlements across all areas of law, has the resources and track record to take on a high-value birth injury case.
The Statute of Limitations for Birth Injury Cases
The state of Florida sets deadlines on all personal injury claims, and the time limits are stricter than some families expect. Most medical malpractice cases have a statute of limitations of two years from the date the injury was discovered or should have been discovered, with a four-year maximum time limit from when the injury occurred. These time limits can apply differently to minors, depending on the child’s age and when the injury was discovered.
This is the most commonly misunderstood deadline within the personal injury laws. Many families think they have until their child reaches the age of eighteen, but that is rarely the case. The statute of limitations often varies based on the age of the child, the disability, or when the injury could have been, or should have been, discovered.
Because the statute of limitations is unforgiving, it’s worth contacting an attorney at the first sign something isn’t right — long before you’re sure. If you’ve missed that deadline, the family loses the ability to bring a claim on behalf of their child for any and all costs incurred, no matter how strong the case is.
What If Your Child Suffered a Birth Injury That Was Discovered Later?
Some of the most difficult personal injury and medical malpractice cases are those in which the delivery and birth of the infant seemed normal. The child comes home from the hospital, and then later on, when the child is a few years older, the child is not able to reach the normal developmental milestones. A disability like cerebral palsy or a cognitive impairment is then diagnosed by a neurologist.
The date of injury is the issue. Without the ability to identify what went wrong at the delivery and birth, it is extremely difficult for medical and personal injury attorneys to identify how the injury could have been caused. That’s why it’s worth speaking to an attorney even if you’re not sure a late diagnosis was caused by a medical mistake. You may still be within the statute of limitations, but without prompt action, that time limit could pass.
How a Birth Injury Lawyer Can Help During a Free Consultation
At Goldman Daszkal & Stallone, the free consultation at the first meeting with Joseph Stallone or one of the attorneys at the firm can determine whether there is a valid medical malpractice claim. If so, the next step is usually to gather all the relevant medical records in order to prove the claim. The consultation is an evaluation to determine the strength of the case, whether there was any medical negligence on the part of the healthcare providers involved, and whether it is a case worth taking on.
The medical malpractice claim at Goldman Daszkal & Stallone is handled on a contingent fee basis. This means that there are no fees or costs due up front. The attorneys at Goldman Daszkal & Stallone cover the costs to investigate the validity of the claim and are only paid if a successful outcome is reached. For many families already managing the daily cost of caring for a disabled child, this fee structure is often the only way they can afford to pursue a claim at all.
The lawyers at Goldman Daszkal & Stallone have 34 years of experience advocating for victims of personal injuries throughout Florida. If your baby suffered a birth injury and you suspect something went wrong during labor or delivery, don’t assume it was simply bad luck. A qualified birth injury attorney can review the medical records, consult independent experts, and determine whether you may have a valid birth injury claim. Acting early is important because the statute of limitations may limit how long your family has to pursue compensation.
