Personal Injury Law

Gurnee family awarded nearly $30 million in Illinois birth injury lawsuit

The Chicago Sun-Times reported that a Gurnee family was recently awarded $30 million after a judge ruled in favor of the Illinois family?s claims that medical negligence during a childbirth caused the child to be a quadriplegic. The Illinois birth injury lawsuit alleged that medical negligence was committed by federally employed physicians who were at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago when their son was born in 2003.

The Illinois family?s lawyers stated that an infection started before the mother went into labor, but she was not given necessary antibiotics. Then, during the first few hours of life, the child showed ?red flags? related to having an infection, but the infection went untreated. The infection unfortunately traveled into the child?s bloodstream and eventually into his brain. The result of the Illinois medical negligence during the childbirth was permanent brain damage. The Chicago birth injury lawsuit alleged that had the doctors followed the standard of care, the child would have been born a normal baby boy instead of a spastic quadriplegic with cerebral palsy.

The attorneys at Levin & Perconti are unfortunately all too familiar with Illinois birth injury lawsuits. Birth injuries are a category of medical malpractice claims and lawsuits that arise when babies are injured at birth or before birth by careless or intentional acts of a healthcare provider. The birth injury attorneys at Levin & Perconti have extensive experience with birth injury lawsuits and injury lawsuits under the Federal Tort Claims Act. Like in the Gurnee family?s case, many of the places we go and spaces we inhabit each day are owned by the federal government and operated by its employees. Victims like the Gurnee family have the right to seek restitution from the government under the Federal Tort Claims Act.

More information is available on the birth injury verdict here.

Full post as published by Illinois Injury Lawyer Blog on April 11, 2010 (boomark / email).