Chicago Birth Injury Lawyer Blog

A recent Cook County medical malpractice case illustrates the importance of a timely delivery. The Illinois birth injury case involved the late delivery of a child after the mother presented to the hospital with warning signs of an uterine rupture.
The child is now four and has sustained permanent injuries, including cognitive visual impairment and cerebral palsy. A Cook County Circuit Court judge dismissed the case after the family reached a settlement with Loyola University Medical Center.
In this case the mother had arrived at Chicago’s Loyola University Medical Center with weak contractions and after being evaluated was assessed as not being in labor. In order to induce labor the attending physician and resident decided to administer Pitocin, a drug designed to accelerate contractions and labor.
As the staff continued to wait for the labor to progress the baby’s heart rate began to weaken, which is yet another sign of uterine rupture. Yet the physicians continued to focus on a vaginal delivery and wait. It wasn’t until the fetal heart rate had slowed to dangerously low levels that the Cesarean section was even ordered. But unfortunately by this time it was too late and the child was delivered with lifelong impairments.

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A recent New York Times editorial caught my eye about a woman in Pakistan who lost her baby after a long, difficult labor and delivery. Her experience was used to demonstrate the lack of emphasis placed on medical practices that we in America take for granted, such as giving birth to your child at a hospital, and the effect that this has on maternal and child birth injuries in impoverished countries.
Recent research suggests that worldwide perhaps as many as one woman dies every minute from complications of pregnancy or childbirth, which is about 20 times greater than the number who have suffered childbirth injuries. As a firm we have taken on several Illinois birth injury cases and there are no words you can offer the family for their loss and pain. What is so striking about The New York Times article is that it suggests that these startling statistics could improve if more emphasis was placed on maternal well being.
For example, while Sri Lanka is an impoverished country it has succeeded in saving more mothers because it simply has tried to do so. And while this sounds like an oversimple solution in our country where a great deal of emphasis is placed on prenatal care and delivery, in impoverished countries this is not the case. The girl portrayed in the article was not taken to a hospital until after she had already been in labor for over 24 hours. By the time a c-section was performed her baby was already too weak to survive. If she had been taken to the hospital and followed by medical professionals from the start of her labor then the outcome might have been different. Yet this is not the standard in her native Pakistan, where one in 74 woman die from pregnancy complications.

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A mother whose daughter was born mentally disabled and prone to seizures received $6 million in settlement from the University of Chicago Medical Center. Chicago birth injury lawsuit claimed that a Cesarean should have been ordered 35 minutes earlier and that because of the late delivery the child suffered brain damage due to lack of oxygen.
The mother in this Illinois medical negligence case was admitted to the University of Chicago Medical Center to have labor induced. At her admission two tests were done that could not establish the fetal well-being. While labor was being induced the fetal heart rate was not showing accelerations even though it should. Over the next two hours the fetal heart rate steadily declined.
The plaintiffs argued that due to that heart rate trend a Cesarean section should have been ordered immediately. The doctors waited until the baby’s heart rate fell between 100 and 105 beats per minute to order an urgent Cesarean section surgery. The baby was delivered about 30 minutes from the time the procedure was ordered. That baby is now an adult and is mentally disabled.

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Birth injuries are tragic and traumatic for parents, the child, and the whole family. Compared to the number of healthy live births in the United States, those children born with injuries are a small percentage. Improved medical devices and practices have reduced the number of birth injuries and can go a long way to preventing future birth injuries.
For example, clinicians use electronic fetal monitoring (EFM) and ultrasound equipment to visualize the fetus to confirm that the unborn child is moving, breathing, and posturing properly and to evaluate the amniotic fluid and monitor the laboring mother’s contractions. All of this information is used to detect signs of fetal distress including hypoxia, which is the lack of oxygen, and ischemia, which is the lack of blood flow.
If there is a detection of non-reassuring fetal heart tones or indications of over stimulation of the uterus during the early stages of labor then the fetal environment can become threatening and very dangerous. When the fetus is endangered the risk of neurological damage, asphyxiation, and other birth injuries increases.

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This year New Orleans was the host city for the American Association for Justice’s mid-year meeting. Illinois attorney Robert Kreisman, a civil justice attorney, attended the seminars and the birth trauma litigation group’s day long event on Monday, February 9, 2009.
Attorneys practicing civil justice traveled from all over the United States to attend the meetings. Different seminars were available each day from Saturday, February 7 through Wednesday, February 11, 2009. At the birth trauma litigation group’s full day seminar, attendees were treated to new developments in electronic fetal monitoring tracing and other issues in medicine, nursing, and hospital practices.
Additionally, the AAJ conference featured a session with a emergency department physician speaking about sepsis, pneumonia, strokes and other potential medical malpractice issues in the emergency department.
All of the speakers, medical professionals and colleagues provided insight and valuable new information to keep up to date on medical legal practices.

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In the many years that I have practiced medical malpractice in Cook County and Illinois, my clients have warned me that the pertinant medical records in their case had been falsified, changed, deleted or simply removed from the hospital and medical charts.
In Illinois, the “intentional destruction, mutilation, alteration or concealment of evidence” is called spoliation of evidence. If medical records were to be destroyed or altered, the Illinois Supreme Court can impose a sanction upon any party who unreasonably refuses to comply with any discovery rule or order entered pursuant to the Illinois Supreme Court Rules. The court has the power to stay the proceedings pending compliance; default the case, barring further pleading related to the issue; dismiss a claim or counterclaim related to that issue; exclude testimony related to the issue; to strike any relevant portion of the offending party’s pleadings and enter judgment on the issue; and to enter a default judgment or dismissal against the offending party.
In 1995, the Illinois Supreme Court recognized a separate cause of action for negligent spoliation of evidence. So if your medical records in a medical malpractice case were altered by the medical staff, then you could file a separate lawsuit regarding the altered evidence. And because adequate remedies for the destruction of evidence already exists under Illinois Supreme Court Rule 219, a new tort wasn’t created. Instead, the Supreme Court held that an action for negligent spoliation could be brought under existing negligence law.

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Erb’s palsy is a injury to a child’s brachial plexus nerves caused by an abnormal or difficult child birth. The brachial plexus is a cluster of nerves in your neck that control all arm movements. Erb’s palsy can be caused by excessive pulling on the shoulders of the infant by the medical staff during delivery. The resulting paralysis affecting the movement of the child’s shoulders, arms or hands can be partial or complete. And while sometimes the paralysis can resolve on its own, it could also necessitate physical therapy or surgery.
In a recent Illinois case, baby Tanisha Ruffin’s shoulder became impacted on her mother’s pelvic bone during delivery, which put stress on Tanisha’s shoulders. In order to free up her shoulders from her mother’s pelvic bone, the defendant obstetrician testified that he used a vacuum extractor cup and a gentle traction on the baby’s head to manipulate her out. Nonetheless, Tanisha was born with Erb’s palsy because of the damage to the brachial plexus nerve network in her shoulder area.
The big issue at trial was whether the Illinois birth injury was caused by excessive traction with the extractor cup, or by the natural propulsive forces of labor.

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A Cook County jury verdict was entered in favor of the University of Chicago Hospitals in a 2005 trial and was upheld on appeal to the Illinois Appellate Court (Kashief Weathers et al. v. University of Chicago Hospitals, et al., No. 1-061726). In the case, several doctors were accused of causing brain damage to an infant born with his umbilical cord wrapped around his neck. The plaintiff child now suffers from cerebral palsy and severe brain damage.
The baby’s mother brought an Illinois birth injury malpractice claim against University of Chicago Hospital alleging that defendant doctors failed to relieve the trauma caused by his umbilical cord during his birth in October 1988. There were also allegations that the doctors didn’t timely treat the baby’s seizures after his birth.
The plaintiffs’ obstetric expert testified that the defendant doctors deviated from the standard of care by not performing a cesarean section, which would have sped up the delivery. The expert felt that a quick delivery could have changed the child’s outcome because the brain damage likely occurred at some time during labor.
But the defense expert, a pediatric neurologist, disagreed. He felt that a cesarean section would not have made a difference because in his opinion the baby was injured at least one day prior to his birth. So by the time his mother was in labor there was nothing the doctors could have done to alter his outcome.
The trial jury sided with the defense and entered a verdict in favor of the University of Chicago Hospitals. The plaintiff brought the case for appeal on several counts.

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