Jury awards mother $22.6 million in botched birth malpractice case
Medical malpractice is bad enough, but when it involves an infant, as this story does, it is especially alarming. Victims and their families have every right to seek a legal authority for protection and financial restitution -- and that’s exactly what one woman did.
On May 19, 2008, a Hamilton County, Ohio, jury awarded a woman whose baby was stuck in her birth canal for 13½ hours $22.6 million in a disturbing medical malpractice case.
According to a news report by the Cincinnati Enquirer, the jury found physician Lisa Yang and her doctors group, Group Health Associates, negligent in the child’s birth. Jurors decided that the defendants should have known their actions would have resulted in brain injuries during the Sept. 4, 1997, birth of Cassie Grow.
Besides being a big baby in a small birth canal, the baby's injuries also were caused because medical workers - supervised by Yang - continued to give the mother drugs to make the uterus contract, hoping to expel the baby. The result was a uterus contracting on the baby's stuck head, causing brain damage to the infant, the Enquirer reported.
Cassie, now 11, is a spastic quadriplegic, which means she has limited use of her limbs.
The mother, who resides in southwest Ohio, was in labor from 9 a.m. until 10:30 p.m., before the 9-pound baby was finally delivered by Caesarian section.
When the jury entered the verdicts and settlements phase of the trial, it ruled that Yang and Group Health Associates must pay the Grow family $22.6 million. That will include $7.9 million for Cassie's future medical bills and $7.5 million for her future loss of ability to perform usual activities. She also was awarded $3 million for pain and suffering.
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