Bristol Birth Injury Lawyer

If your child suffered a birth injury or died during labor and delivery, you are probably seeking answers desperately. You may question whether there’s anything that could have been done to prevent the injury or death from occurring. While many birth injuries are usually unavoidable, others are directly caused by medical negligence.

Medical negligence refers to the improper or unskilled medical treatment of a patient by a medical professional. Specifically, medical negligence occurs when a medical professional fails to provide the same quality of treatment that a professional with similar educational qualifications and experience would have in similar circumstances.

If your child’s birth injury was caused by medical negligence, it is usually not hard to tell because the symptoms usually start immediately or soon after birth. Your child may recover from a non-serious birth injury with treatment and time, but some birth injuries result in life-long health complications.

Still, it can be complicated to find out how a birth injury is linked to medical practice. Symptoms that appear shortly after birth or later in your child’s development could be indicative of the fact that labor and/or delivery was not done properly. Such symptoms include:

• Silence or unusual behavior immediately after birth
• Limp or floppy tone at birth
• Baby born with a blue color
• Lack of movement or use of an extremity
• Speech challenges
• Issues with muscle contraction
• Learning delays
• Difficulty walking
• Difficulty chewing, eating, and/or swallowing

At Aeton Law in Hartford, Connecticut, we will listen to your story, review your child’s medical records, and help you determine whether medical negligence is responsible for your child’s developmental delays. If we find out that it is the case, we can help you move forward and seek damages for your and your child’s suffering.

If medical negligence is determined to be responsible for a mother or her infant’s birth injury, that healthcare facility or professional can be ordered to compensate the child and his/her parents for damages suffered, which include:

• Loss of future earnings
• Diminishments of life’s enjoyments
• Pain and suffering
• Past, current, and future medical expenses
• Disfigurement

Punitive damages may also be awarded in some instances. People often assume that the delivering obstetrician is the only medical professional that can be held accountable for a birth injury. However, the reality is that any negligent member of the medical team can be held accountable for a birth injury that’s a result of that medical professional’s negligence.

Connecticut, like all states, has a strict statute of limitations with regard to filing birth injury claims. If you fail to file a lawsuit within that timeframe will result in the court’s refusal to hear the case. In Connecticut, plaintiffs have 2 years from the date of the injury to file a medical malpractice lawsuit.

However, that can be extended by 1 year under the “discovery of harm rule”, which defines when a child’s injury should have been reasonably discovered. That means that the maximum statute of limitations when it comes to birth injury claims in Connecticut is 3 years.

Connecticut imposes an absolute deadline of 3 years for all medical malpractice claims including birth injury claims. Since that timeline is so short, it is extremely important that you get in touch with an attorney for a birth injury claim soon after it is discovered.