Boyes Turner’s birth injury specialists secured a settlement of £9million plus lifelong payments of up to £273,000pa for a boy whose cerebral palsy was caused by HIE during delays in his delivery when his mother was sent home from hospital three days after her waters had broken.Her prolonged spontaneous rupture of membranes or PROM and her abnormally high heart rate put her pregnancy at high risk and should have led to review by a doctor and careful monitoring of her unborn baby in hospital. Instead, she was sent home and returned to hospital later with strong contractions. After a further six hours of labour, during which the fetal heart rate was monitored only by intermittent auscultation (listening), her baby was born suffering from lack of oxygen.The defendant hospital denied responsibility for causing our client’s brain injury but admitted that the monitoring of the labour was negligent. This had already been formally investigated by the hospital and had led to at least one of the midwives being struck off the midwifery register. Under pressure, later in the case, the hospital finally admitted full liability for our client’s injury and lifelong disability. We obtained a court judgment and interim (advance) payments totalling £1.25million to meet our client’s urgent needs, including a family home which better suited his disability whilst the case continued towards final settlement.Read more about this case and others on our specialist cerebral palsy website here.If you are caring for a child or a young adult with cerebral palsy or neurological injury caused by medical negligence and would like to find out more about making a claim, contact us, free and confidentially, on cerebralpalsy@boyesturner.com.
