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Birth injuries are difficult to consider at such an important and stressful time in your life. However, unfortunate situations where medical care providers act negligently or recklessly do occur, posing a serious risk to the child's future well-being.
In these types of situations, you may have the ability to hold the at-fault party accountable for paying the costs of medical care, home modifications, ongoing therapy and treatment, and pain and suffering, mental anguish and loss of enjoyment of life. However, you can only obtain this relief if you file your action within the time limit set forth by Illinois’ statute of limitations.
To learn more about your case, how much you could recover, and when you must act, call our dedicated Illinois birth injury attorneys as soon as possible. By reaching out to Wruck Paupore at (219) 322-1166 today, you can obtain a free first-time case evaluation.
There are a variety of conditions that could result from medical malpractice during the labor and delivery process. While some may result from natural complications during the process, some can point directly to shortcomings in the medical care that you or your family received. Below are summaries of just a few of the most common forms of birth injury.
Erb’s palsy is a birth injury involving the brachial plexus nerves most frequently associated with medical malpractice. When excessive force is exerted on the baby’s head, neck, or shoulders during delivery, the nerves that connect the upper extremities to the spinal cord can be damaged, causing paralysis or loss of sensation or control in the arms, hands, or shoulders. Depending on the extent of the damage, Erb’s palsy may not heal entirely and could cause indefinite disability.
Hypoxia occurs when the baby is deprived of a steady supply of oxygen for an extended period. This could occur during any stage of labor but most frequently occurs when there are delays in the delivery process. Hypoxic encephalopathy could lead to conditions such as cerebral palsy, which is a serious disability that may require lifelong care indefinitely.
At the moment of birth, a healthy baby will have enough flexibility to allow them to navigate through the birth canal safely. However, a direct consequence of that added flexibility is the ease with which fractures may occur. This is particularly common where the baby is breech or positioned feet-first, which makes delivery much more difficult and could become life-threatening.
Though delivery rooms are typically sterile environments, that does not prevent infections from passing from mother to child in the birth canal. It is critical that physicians identify the potential for infection by conducting tests on the mother prior to the birthing process and plan accordingly to treat the infection and prevent the harm that it may cause.
If a birth injury lawsuit is successful, an Illinois court will award damages based on the collective costs that the injury has caused and will likely lead to in the future, as well as the impact on quality of life. The following are some of the many factors that courts will consider when assessing damages in an Illinois birth injury case.
While there can be enormous financial costs associated with a serious birth injury, the emotional and mental anguish resulting from these injuries can be the most difficult consequence to face and is a significant part of your claim for legal damages.
Illinois has complex laws on deadlines for filing all types of personal injury lawsuits, including those stemming from birth injuries. For medical malpractice specifically, the time window provided by the Illinois statute of limitations is two years from either the date the injury was sustained or when it reasonably should have been discovered, lasting no more than four years total from the date the injury occurred.
However, several exceptions may apply specifically to birth injuries. If the medical malpractice victim is a minor at the time of the injury (as is always the case with birth injuries), they and their parent or legal guardian have up to eight years within which to file their lawsuit, provided they have not reached the age of 22 during that time. Suppose the at-fault medical provider takes steps to conceal the cause of injury that could be considered fraud. In that case, the victim has up to five years after discovering the relationship between the malpractice and the injury to file.
A dedicated Illinois birth injury attorney can help you synthesize the various laws and exceptions that govern your filing window so that you can avoid having your case thrown out for missing a statutory filing deadline.
It is always best to reach out as soon as possible to give your lawyer plenty of time to assess the situation and develop your case. While the statute of limitation may give you ample time to file your lawsuit, the most important evidence necessary to prove your case may begin to disappear soon after the birth, so it is imperative to act as quickly as possible.
When you call the experienced Illinois birth injury lawyers with Wruck Paupore at (219) 322-1166 today to receive a free case evaluation and to learn more about your legal rights.
Don is a founding partner and one of the nation’s top-ranked personal injury litigators. He is a member of the Multi-million Dollar Advocates Forum, which includes less than 1% of the nation’s trial lawyers, and awarded the highest ranking given by Martindale Hubbel and AVVO.
More importantly, Don understands representing personal injury victims is about more than recovering the best settlement: it’s about helping clients get back on their feet and supporting them in every aspect of their recovery.
In nearly all cases, our clients seek compensation from the wrongdoer’s insurance company. Before forming Wruck Paupore, Jason worked for a prominent law firm representing some of the world’s largest insurers. This experience gives Jason a deep understanding of the insurance industry and the strategies it uses to pay injury victims as little as possible.
Jason -- and our entire team -- put this inside knowledge to work to force insurance companies to pay what is actually owed. Often, we use the insurance company’s own tactics against them as we fight for the full compensation our client deserves.
For more than four decades, Keith has been fighting for injury victims. During that time, he’s watched the insurance industry change, with insurers now more interested in protecting their stock price than treating injury victims fairly.
Since the beginning, Keith has put people first. From his childhood in Gary, Indiana during the 1960’s and working his way through law school, Keith has risen to become one of the Midwest’s most respected trial lawyers. He has never forgotten that being a lawyer is about helping people -- and seeing injury victims through struggles in a way that could change their lives forever.
Over the decades, Keith, Don and Jason have fought relentlessly for clients, even when other lawyers have said the case was impossible to win.
Contact Us:
Wruck Paupore P.C.
Injury Lawyers
275 Joliet St. Suite #250
Dyer, IN 46311
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