Do you know where to turn when your child is diagnosed with a birth injury? The first person to call is a doctor to help your child get a diagnosis and care, but some birth injuries require years of medical attention. How do you pay for it all?
One way is with the help of our Huntsville birth injury attorneys. Our team can investigate your case to see if medical malpractice caused your baby’s injury. If it did, we can help you get money from whoever harmed your baby to pay for their care and other damages.
For a free legal consultation, call 1-800-222-9529
What it Takes to Win a Medical Malpractice Case
The settlements for a birth injury can reach six or even seven figures, but doctors have a lot of protections against malpractice claims. But you can win your case, and our birth injury attorneys can help. Here’s what has to be proven to win a medical malpractice case.
A Medical Relationship
First, your child and whoever you’re suing must have a medical relationship. When you sue a medical professional, you can also sue their employer. Most people give birth in hospitals, so the institution can also be liable.
There may be many parties who share liability. Each party you sue increases the chances of winning compensation, but we must prove they had a role in your child’s care.
Breaching the Standards of Care
Medical science is not perfect, so someone’s injury or death isn’t automatically the fault of the doctor. How do you prove negligent care, then? The answer is the standards of care created by medical professionals.
These standards are the agreed-upon methods of care for different medical scenarios. They’re created based on medical science and case histories. Some procedures could create injury, but the procedure could prevent greater injury.
To determine if what happened to your baby breached the standards, we consult with medical experts and examine past cases to see if someone broke the rules. If they did, they were negligent.
Causation of Injury
A negligent act alone isn’t enough to win compensation. We also have to prove that the act of negligence caused injury to your child. The act doesn’t have to directly cause harm. Indirect actions, like a misdiagnosis, can also cause a birth injury.
Causation also involves ruling out other potential causes. For instance, if your child is born with a broken skull and brain bleeding, we may have to prove there wasn’t a birth defect that creates brittle bones, like osteogenesis imperfecta.
Damages
Finally, we have to show how you were harmed. These are called damages in legalese. We calculate how much they’re worth for your claim. Some damages are easy to calculate, but others require a lot of effort.
The cost of a long-term or permanent injury like cerebral palsy may need the help of an expert economist to calculate a true value. Non-economic damages such as pain and suffering require negotiation by your attorney. There may also be legal limits on how much you can earn from certain kinds of damages.
Birth Injury Lawyer Near Me 1-800-222-9529
Why You Need a Birth Injury Attorney
If you’re a parent of a child with a birth injury, you have a right to sue on behalf of your child. Proving everything needed to win a case and get the full value of your claim is incredibly difficult to do on your own.
Your attorney will handle all the legalities of your case so you can turn your attention toward caring for your child’s injury. They will get all the evidence needed to evaluate your claim, calculate its value, and press the insurance companies to pay you what you’re owed.
They’ll also protect you from tactics that insurers will use to try to deny your claim or pay you less than you’re owed. If you receive a settlement offer for your baby’s injury, do not accept it without talking to a Huntsville birth injury lawyer, even if it seems large. Once you accept an offer, you cannot get more money for the same injury later if it isn’t enough.
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Contributory Negligence in Alabama
Another important reason for hiring a birth injury attorney is Alabama’s rule on contributory negligence. This rule decides how to divide fault and compensation when two parties could be at fault, and it has huge implications for your case.
Under contributory negligence laws, the court will deny your compensation if you are responsible for any part of your injuries, even as little as 1%. You must have no fault at all in the accident to collect money. So how does this work for birth injuries?
Alabama law states that they cannot hold children under the age of seven responsible for their actions. However, if the insurance companies prove you contributed to your child’s injury (e.g. not following a doctor’s instructions), your compensation is at risk. Having an attorney defend against these claims is a good idea, and we can help you.
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When Do I Need to File a Lawsuit?
There is a deadline for filing cases called the statute of limitations. For cases involving injury to a newborn in Alabama, you have until the child’s 8th birthday to sue. If you also had injuries, you have two years from when the injury happened. Filing after these deadlines will dismiss your case.
Don’t Give Up Hope. Talk to a Huntsville Birth Injury Attorney
It may seem like the odds are stacked against you, but the single best way to even the odds is to hire an experienced birth injury attorney. The attorneys at The Birth Injury Lawyers Group can help you overcome the odds and help you get victory and compensation for your child.
Learn your legal options by calling the number on your screen or emailing us. One of our representatives will connect you with a local birth injury attorney to answer your questions. The sooner you start, the sooner you can receive compensation. All consultations are free, and you will owe us nothing unless you win your case.
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