Boyes Turner’s cerebral palsy lawyers have secured a £16 million settlement for a teenager whose brain was injured by profound and acute hypoxic ischaemia (oxygen deprivation) in the hours leading up to his delayed delivery.
Following two normal fetal heart rate (FHR) CTG traces during our client’s mother’s labour, further FHR monitoring revealed signs of fetal distress. Instead of continuously monitoring the FHR and, if it remained abnormal, calling a doctor to review and deliver the baby urgently, the midwife allowed the labour to continue with intermittent monitoring. A doctor was called to review when our client’s mother had been pushing for an hour and a half, but misinterpreted the abnormal FHR. The doctor planned for pushing to continue for a further half hour, during which syntocinon was used to augment (boost) the labour. When continuous CTG monitoring was finally started and revealed dangerous abnormalities, the decision was made to carry out an urgent delivery. A further 30 minutes later the mother was transferred to theatre and forceps delivery was attempted, unsuccessfully, three times before, a further hour later, the baby was finally delivered by caesarean section. There were then further delays in resuscitation.
Our client has four limb dystonic cerebral palsy. His movement, speech and language, verbal comprehension and mental processing are impaired. He has retained cognitive function and needs SEN (educational) support. He will need 24-hour care throughout his (predicted) long life.
The defendant hospital admitted responsibility for our client’s injury. We obtained interim payments of £875,000 to meet our client’s urgent needs, including for suitable accommodation, whilst the case was stayed until our client was old enough for his lifelong needs to be accurately assessed. Final settlement provided a lump sum of £6.1million plus lifelong annual payments of up to £140,000pa to cover the costs of care.
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 and would like to talk to one of our specialist solicitors, free and confidentially, to find out more about making a medical negligence claim, contact us at [email protected].
