Regardless of the size of your household, not many occasions can match the joy of welcoming a new baby to your family. But it can be equally devastating when your child gets harmed by the negligence of healthcare providers you trusted with their safety.
In many cases, the injuries experienced by a baby during or right after their birth can result in long-lasting issues. Apart from affecting your child’s life, these problems can also rack up their healthcare costs and cause various challenges for your family.
By collecting relevant evidence, gathering expert opinions, and having a strong birth injury attorney, you can file a birth injury lawsuit to seek damages for your harrowing ordeal.
To help you learn how to file a birth injury lawsuit, here’s a lowdown on the process and the typical steps that it involves for many families.
Contact a Birth Injury Attorney
While this is usually the final phase in filing many other lawsuits, contacting a specialized attorney is often the first step in birth injury cases. It’s because a birth injury lawsuit has several nuances attached to it, with the statute of limitations being one of the most important aspects of the case.
Depending upon the state you live in, you may only have a certain number of years from the child’s birth date to file a lawsuit against the specific healthcare providers. Once this duration has passed, the statute of limitations expires, and you are unable to bring the case to court.
That is why you must reach out to a birth injury lawyer to speed up the rest of the process. You can then take the required steps to file your lawsuit with their counsel and expertise.
Discuss the Merits and Collect Evidence
Even when you have an experienced birth injury attorney by your side, filing the actual lawsuit is no mean feat. Perhaps the most significant task is to prove how the respective health care providers’ negligence may have led to your child’s injury.
A birth injury can refer to various issues, including but not limited to prenatal care, head injuries, and oxygen deprivation. Sometimes, these injuries can turn into long-term challenges that may affect your child’s development and well-being through conditions such as cerebral palsy.
Medical opinions from neutral and third-party professionals can help you determine the merits of the case. This helps you identify how the healthcare providers’ actions may have caused long-term issues for your child’s health. You can then collect the required evidence of your child’s condition to show how it could be a result of the health provider’s negligence before, during, or right after your baby’s birth.
File Paperwork and Follow the Case to Court
Once you have the required evidence, it helps your birth injury attorney in building a medical malpractice against the respective healthcare providers. From there, they can file your case and challenge the defendants in court.
It’s common to be presented with an out of court settlement not long after bringing your case to light. But it’s your choice whether to accept it or not. If you decide to take the case to court, your lawyer may take opinions from medical experts to compare how the standard medical of care differed in your situation and led to your child’s injury.
After viewing the evidence and gathering analysis, the respective judge can determine whether or not the healthcare providers were at fault. If the judgement is in your favor, you can receive the damages that you seek and take care of your child accordingly.
While the compensation may not cure your child from their injuries, it does provide a sense of accountability and justice that you need to heal from your traumatic experience.
Filing a birth injury lawsuit can be a complicated process. But once you know the basics and hire the services of a reliable birth injury attorney, it can become easier to go through the procedure.
Keeping this in mind, it’s important that you have experienced legal expertise by your side who can support you every step of the way. This simplifies the otherwise complicated process, and increases your chances of obtaining the outcome you need to ensure your child’s wellbeing.
