Identifying the proper defendants in a birth injury lawsuit is not always as easy as it appears to be. Not only will your lawyers need to identify what medical providers caused the injury, but they will also have to determine who those providers work for.
Identifying Medical Providers
Our birth injury malpractice lawyers are accustomed to reviewing medical records, and we can typically identify the negligent health care providers. We will send those records out for review to doctors and specialists to confirm our opinions. We may consult with obstetricians Obstetrician Medical Malpractice, nurse-midwives, maternal-fetal specialists, Family Doctors, emergency doctors Emergency Room doctors, Anesthesiologists, Obstetrical Nurses and even hospital administrators. Each of these types of experts can tell us definitively whether there was negligence by someone in their same category.
Identifying Corporate Entities
Sometimes it is more challenging to identify the corporations and associations that must be sued. For example, obstetricians will typically be individually named in a birth injury lawsuit, and their practice will also be identified. It is important to get the exact name of the practice right on the court documents. We will check the practice’s website, the doctor’s resume, prior medical malpractice cases against the doctor, and even the secretary of state business website which may have valuable information. Likewise, nurses may be employed by the hospital, or may be loaned out by a staffing agency. The exact nature of the business relationship matters—if the wrong entity is sued, there may not be insurance to cover a birth injury settlement or verdict.
The corporate entities may be responsible for many reasons. If the doctor or health care provider was working for that entity, the entity could be negligent for failing to properly hire, train or supervise the employee. The employee may have been an agent of the employer during the negligence, which means that the employer is responsible for the employee’s negligence (called respondeat superior).
Filing The Case Early
When possible, our lawyers try to file birth injury lawsuits well before the expiration of the statute of limitations. The statute of limitations is the deadline to file a lawsuit, and it varies by state. When a case is filed early, the lawyers may have the opportunity to discover important information about whether any other doctors, corporations or other medical providers were negligent and should be brought into the lawsuit.
Contact Us
If your child was injured by medical malpractice, contact our personal injury lawyers at (440) 252-4399 or online for help in securing justice for your child.