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Cerebral Palsy cases are a subset of general medical malpractice litigation.  So in order to prove a cerebral palsy case, you have to satisfy the general rules of medical malpractice.

1. Prove that the Doctor, Nurse or Nurse Practitioner violated the "standard of care" for the situation they were in.  This basically means that they made a mistake.
2. Prove that there is damage.
3. Prove that the damage is directly the result of the mistake.  This is called causation.

With Cerebral Palsy (CP) you focus on what happened that caused the CP.  Some of of what you need to prove and some of the most common medical malpractice related causes of CP are:

• Oxygen Deprivation.  This can happen during the labor process.  While a woman is in labor there are monitoring devices used to measure the baby's heart rate.  This device produces Fetal Heart Strips.  You can review the fetal heart strips to see how the child was doing through the process and to see whether there were any danger signs that presented that should have been caught and acted upon.
• Infection:  Did an infection develop that went undiagnosed.  If it did develop, then this can cause damage to parts of the brain resulting in motor function weakness and cerebral palsy.

This is not an exhaustive list of what causes Cerebral Palsy.  For more information you can check out another blog that Rob and I post on that focuses on Cerebral Palsy and Brain Injury cases.  www.cerebralpalsylawblog.com