If your baby suffered physical trauma during the birthing process that resulted in injury, it’s important to connect with an experienced birth injury lawyer in Santa Monica, CA parents trust. All consultations at Cohen Injury Law Group are risk-free and confidential, so you need not feel nervous or self-conscious about seeking legal guidance. All too often, parents of infants who have suffered birth injury hesitate to seek legal guidance for a variety of reasons, including uncertainty about whether they have grounds upon which to file a legal claim. In truth, all parents of infants harmed during the birth process should seek clarity about their legal rights and options because they may be entitled to significant compensation from those who caused their children harm.

What Is a Birth Injury?

The Santa Monica, CA birth injury lawyer team at Cohen Injury Law Group has extensive experience representing the interests of infants who have suffered a birth injury and the interests of their caregivers. Essentially, a birth injury is any physical harm that befalls an infant during the birthing process.

Sometimes birth injuries cannot be helped, as they occur despite the fact that the healthcare providers attending the affected child’s birth are providing both mother and child with excellent care. However, many birth injuries are preventable. In the event that a physician or other medical professional provides substandard care – when compared with the level of care that other reasonably competent providers would give if faced with similar circumstances – and an infant is harmed as a result of that substandard care, the situation may be legally actionable.

The Santa Monica, CA birth injury lawyer team at Cohen Injury Law Group handles all kinds of birth injury cases. You can benefit from connecting with our firm regardless of the nature of your child’s harm. With that said, some of the most common birth injury case types that we manage include:

•       Cerebral Palsy
•       Severe cuts and abrasions
•       Sepsis or other acquired infections
•       Erb’s Palsy
•       Brachial Plexus injuries
•       Oxygen deprivation
•       Shoulder Dystocia
•       Seizure disorders
•       Hypoxic-Ischemic Encephalopathy

When birth injury could have been prevented had a provider engaged in care pursuant to medical professional standards, the provider’s failure to provide proper care is referred to as medical malpractice.

Who Can Be Held Accountable for Birth Injury?

There is a common misconception that only physicians can be held liable for medical negligence or medical malpractice. In truth, any medical provider or medical facility can potentially be held liable if their actions or inactions are not in line with professional standards of care and their failure to provide adequate standards of care results in patient harm. As a result, you may be in a position to hold a physician, nurse, technician, pharmacist, hospital administrator, or a hospital itself responsible for the harm that your child has suffered. If you are unsure of who should be held accountable for your child’s harm, that’s okay. Our firm will initiate a thorough and objective investigation in order to determine who, if anyone, can be held liable for what has happened to your baby.

How Does the Birth Injury Lawsuit Process Work?

Once you have decided that you would like to pursue legal action, our firm will begin the process of building the strongest possible case on your behalf. We will likely begin by thoroughly investigating the circumstances surrounding your child’s harm. Investigating the details of your situation thoroughly will help to ensure that we can accurately pinpoint exactly what happened, why it happened, and who can be held responsible for what happened.

Once our investigation is complete, we will determine who may be named as a defendant in a potentially successful birth injury lawsuit. Once we have filed that lawsuit, the defendant or defendants named in the suit will be permitted to respond. At that point, both sides will engage in discovery, which essentially means that each side will request evidence from the other. Next, we will likely begin negotiating with the other side to determine if we can reach a fairly valued settlement on your behalf without going to trial.

Note that our firm we’ll prepare your case as if the trial is inevitable throughout this process. Approaching case preparation in this way helps to ensure that we have all the evidence we could need to be effective in negotiations while also being prepared at any point to move to the trial phase of the process. With that said, fewer than one out of every 10 personal injury cases is tried in court. Reaching a settlement outside of court is the norm. Should we need to argue your case in court, we will vigorously advocate on behalf of your child’s rights in an effort to secure the maximum amount of compensation as a jury award or as an award handed down by a judge, in the event of a bench trial.

If your case is successful, you could be awarded economic damages for medical bills, lost earning potential, and other quantifiable losses. Additionally, you could be awarded damages for pain and suffering and other losses that are harder to qualify with a dollar amount. Securing a fairly valued compensation award will help to ensure that your child’s ongoing medical needs are met well into the future. If you are at all hesitant to explore your legal options, take a moment to think about the financial burden that you and your child may face if you don’t take advantage of this opportunity while it remains available to you.

Speak with a Lawyer to Learn More About Your Options

If your infant recently suffered an injury as a result of the birthing process and you suspect that those injuries could have been prevented, connect with the knowledgeable legal team at Cohen Injury Law Group to clarify your rights and options under the law. While no attorney can guarantee the outcome of a case, you can rest assured that if you choose to work with our dedicated Santa Monica, CA birth injury lawyer team, we will do our utmost to secure you the maximum amount of compensation that you and your family are entitled to. We look forward to speaking with you and to hearing your baby’s story.