Boyes Turner’s cerebral palsy lawyers have secured a very substantial compensation settlement for a teenage boy who suffered severe brain damage, whole body cerebral palsy and learning difficulties at birth from mistakes in his mother’s maternity care.Our client’s mother’s first baby had been delivered by emergency caesarean section. In her second pregnancy, she was admitted to the defendant hospital in severe pain with symptoms suggesting a (potentially life-threatening) placental abruption. This should have prompted the maternity team to continuously monitor the unborn baby’s (fetal) heart rate by CTG. However, fetal heart rate abnormalities on the CTG trace were misinterpreted and monitoring was stopped. She was then left unattended in labour and her condition deteriorated. Our client’s father repeatedly asked for help but when the midwife finally attended, much later, the unborn baby’s heart rate could not be detected. Our client was delivered by an emergency caesarean section which revealed that his mother’s previous caesarean scar had ruptured. He had suffered hypoxic (lack of oxygen) brain damage.We pursued a claim for compensation for our client’s injury and disability against the defendant hospital. They admitted responsibility. We obtained a liability judgment and a £250,000 interim payment to help meet our client’s urgent needs and ease his family’s financial hardship. Final settlement was negotiated with the defendant remotely during coronavirus lockdown, providing our client with a large lump sum and guaranteed, annual payments rising to several hundred thousand pounds each year for the rest of our client’s life. Our client’s and his family’s privacy are protected by an anonymity order.Read more about this case and others on our specialist cerebral palsy website here.If you are caring for a child or young adult with cerebral palsy or neurological injury and would like to find out more about how we can help you make a medical negligence claim, you can talk to one of our specialist solicitors, free and confidentially, by contacting us at cerebralpalsy@boyesturner.com.
