Personal Injury Law

Cerebral Palsy Verdict in Frederick

The Maryland Daily Record reports that a Frederick County jury awarded nearly $4 million to a boy in a malpractice lawsuit claiming the child?s cerebral palsy was caused by his doctors? failure to properly monitor his heartbeat before delivery. The jury?s verdict was against an ER doctor and an obstetrician. Three nurses, a third doctor and the hospital were not found liable.

The nature of the claims for at least two of the doctors (I?m not sure of the claims against the third who was not held responsible) that were allegedly a substantial contributing factor in the child?s cerebral palsy were different. The emergency room doctor was ostensibly told of the concern about the mother at 5:45 a.m. but did not see or evaluate her. The obstetrician allegedly was told about the concerns with the patient at 7:00 a.m. but did not see her or order that she be sent to labor and delivery.

Yet all three doctors were represented by the same malpractice lawyer. As I have written before, Defendants? lawyers are moths to the flame of presenting a united front against Plaintiffs. But I would think that the obstetrician would have liked to say, ?No one did anything wrong but, sure, I relied on part on the fact that I assumed the ER doctor would have looked at the problem if there were immediate concerns.?

Now, that exact defense might be inapplicable to the facts of this malpractice case but some derivative version of that defense is almost invariably applicable when a medical malpractice lawsuit makes allegations against different doctors. Again, I do not know all of facts and there could certainly be other facts present in this cerebral palsy case that would make one malpractice lawyer handling the claims of all three doctors an understandable strategy. This is obviously Monday morning quarterbacking after a bad medical malpractice verdict - which is incredibly easy to do. The malpractice lawyer who represented the doctors is considered one of the best medical malpractice lawyers in Maryland. But even if there are facts I don't know that would change my analysis in this case, the principle I am talking about still holds true: defendants are almost invariably better off having their own lawyer to at least give them the easy option of jumping ship on the "we are all in this together" boat.

Full post as published by Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog on June 01, 2009 (boomark / email).