January 1st, 2025 – A mother who says her newborn son suffered “catastrophic injuries” when he was not delivered by cesarean section quickly enough at a Connecticut hospital blames alleged failures of the labor and delivery team.
The mother is named as a plaintiff in a birth injury lawsuit against Yale New Haven Hospital and Yale University, both for herself and her child.
The lawsuit claims that the child, born on February 11, 2023, suffered severe hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (asphyxial brain damage) resulting in permanent mental, neurologic, and physical handicaps, including motor deficits, loss of intelligence, seizures, difficulty feeding requiring a gastronomy tube, bilateral vision loss, abnormal muscle tone with spasms and tremors, physical pain, and mental anguish, some or all of which injuries are or may be permanent.
According to Nationwide Children’s Hospital, this condition is caused by a lack of oxygen to the brain before or shortly after birth. “Babies born with HIE may have neurological or developmental problems.”
The lawsuit says the mother, who is not being named to protect the privacy of the child, went to Yale New Haven Hospital on February 10, 2023, and was admitted for the labor and delivery of her son.
That day and the next, fetal monitor strips demonstrated signs of “potential and actual fetal distress,” the suit alleges, but the baby’s delivery allegedly was not expedited. The baby was delivered by cesarean just after noon on February 11, 2023, the suit says.
The lawsuit alleges there was a failure to:
- Adequately and properly care for, treat, diagnose, and supervise the labor and delivery of the plaintiffs.
- Timely recognize and properly respond to indications of fetal distress, including recurrent category II fetal heart tracings.
- Appreciate and properly address the depletion of reserves.
- Timely intervention when labor was progressing slowly and had not made significant progress.
- Recommend, order, and perform an emergency cesarean section delivery in a timely fashion.
- Recognize and respond to the baby’s critical condition to ensure delivery as soon as possible to prevent catastrophic injuries.
The lawsuit, filed by attorneys Michael R. Kennedy and Patrick J. Kennedy of Kennedy, Johnson, Schwab & Roberge, P.C., claims that the mother and child had to incur financial obligations for medical care, including prolonged hospitalization, rehabilitation, diagnostic studies, medical treatment, office visits, surgeries, and medications.
The lawsuit also claims the child will require special care and supervision for the rest of his life and that his future earning capacity has been “permanently destroyed.”
Source: Hartford Courant
