Injury Laws
May 23rd, 2008People are generally aware of the hazards of travel by road, traffic laws and the consequencies of breaking them. However injuries can also be sustained within the safe walls of a hospital or maternity clinic. These are injuries sustained during childbirth, often referred to as ‘Birth Injuries’.
Birth injuries are generally sustained during a baby’s transit through the birth canal. Various type of injuries are head injuries, nerve injuries, bone injuries, brain injuries. Cerebral palsy is the most common form of brain injury. Some injuries are not very critical and heal after the baby is a few weeks old. But the more critical injuries can lead to permanent paralysis, visual disorders, learning disorders, hyperactivity and the like. So a child can suffer due to no fault of it’s own. A child’s disabilities also poses problems, pain and sorrow to the parents and in some cases huge expenses.
While an injury or disability caused during birth cannot be undone, some solace can be found by the parents of such children by resorting to legal action. If it can be proved that the injury was caused by the negligence or carelessness of the medical staff during delivery, the defaulting persons could be held responsible and made to financially compensate the parents of the child. This is all the more necessary since sometimes the parents have to incur heavy expenses for the treatment and care of the affected child. The affected family may also have to undergo a change of lifestyle, not to mention the emotional turmoil they may go through.
The negligence or error of a health care professional is called a medical malpractice. Sometimes the hospital itself can be held resposible under the legal doctrine of “respondeat superior”. This theory states that an employer can be held liable for the acts of his employees if they were acting within the scope of their employment when the negligence occurred. In some cases the employees themselves are not held responsible but the hospital can be considered guilty.
In the U.S there are law firms specializing in birth injury cases. The costs of litigation can be high quite high but most of these firms operate on a contingency fee basis. They do not charge anything upfront but take their fees in the form of a commission or percentage of the compensation awarded. This is convenient to both the legal firm and the aggrieved party. While this may sound an attractive proposition it is just one side of the coin. If the suiing lawyer loses the case, he loses heavily as he has not charged anything from his client. So, many good lawyers hesitate to take up such cases. However as the aggrieved parents have nothing to lose, they should go in for litigation.