Infant Wrongful Death Causes

Fact Checked

The death of an infant is a tragic incident, especially if it is legally termed a wrongful death, a death that could have been prevented with better care. Infant wrongful death causes include asphyxia, physical trauma, medication errors, misdiagnosis of an illness, and more.

What Is Infant Wrongful Death?

The death of an infant up to 28 days old is termed neonatal death, and it can occur naturally for various reasons. Even with modern medicine, mothers and their babies still die during or immediately after childbirth.

Labor and delivery is difficult, and so many things can go wrong. The most common causes or risk factors include congenital disabilities, which are often genetic, low birth weight, and premature births.

Many of these causes are risk factors that either could not be planned for or were planned for, but the infant died anyway, despite the best efforts of a medical team.

Doctors and other medical caregivers are responsible for monitoring a pregnant patient, recognizing potential complications that could harm the child, and taking all measures to prevent these complications from causing harm.

When a mother expects medical care, and her designated medical caregiver fails in any of these, the baby could die, and that death could be deemed wrongful and negligent.

What Causes Wrongful Death in an Infant?

A lot can go wrong during pregnancy, labor, and delivery. Doctors cannot foresee all complications or prevent all injuries or deaths. However, when a newborn’s death is wrongful, it means something went wrong that a doctor should have been able to prevent.

Asphyxia and Brain Damage

Asphyxia is restricted or limited blood flow, which directly causes hypoxia or oxygen deprivation. This is a common cause of complications and lasting damage during childbirth.

Oxygen deprivation can also be fatal and cause a type of brain damage called hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy. Many potential factors may cause asphyxia:[1]

• In the womb, the baby may lack oxygen because of problems with the umbilical cord. The baby’s head may become trapped in the mother’s pelvis during delivery. If not removed quickly, the baby can asphyxiate. The urgent pulling on the baby in this particular situation can cause other kinds of birth injuries even if the baby doesn’t die, including Erb’s palsy.
• Asphyxia may also affect an infant because of health problems in the mother. For instance, her blood oxygen levels may be low if she has low blood pressure, an infection, or a heart condition.
• Asphyxia can also happen if the placenta detaches from the uterus too early or as a result of uterine rupture.

A woman’s doctor should be able to detect and treat these conditions to prevent complications during childbirth. If an infant is born having been deprived of oxygen, the doctor should recognize and treat it immediately to prevent brain damage and even death.

Traumatic Birth Injuries

Another potential cause of an infant’s wrongful death is a birth injury. A birth injury occurs when a baby is physically harmed during labor and delivery.

Physical harm to an infant could be an accident, such as when a baby presenting in a normal position gets stuck in the pelvis. Birth injuries are also the result of negligence.

The inappropriate use of instruments, for instance, can cause injuries to infants.[2] Too much force with a vacuum extractor or forceps can even fracture a baby’s skull.

Failure to Order a Cesarean Section

One of the major responsibilities a doctor has for the care of a pregnant patient is to determine if a delivery is likely to be difficult or if complications are possible.

The doctor then has to make an important, possibly life-saving decision, to perform a Cesarean section and deliver the baby surgically instead of vaginally.

When a doctor fails to order a Cesarean section, and the infant dies because of complications that should have been foreseen, that doctor could rightfully be accused of infant wrongful death.

Medication Errors

Not all infant wrongful deaths occur during or immediately after labor and delivery. While the mother and infant are still under the care of the hospital or medical center, many mistakes could be made that may result in the child’s death.

Mistakes with medications have the potential to harm anyone, but infants are especially vulnerable to dying from these errors because they are so small. Even a little bit of the wrong medication could be deadly.

This is what happened in the case of an infant’s wrongful death in Chicago when a baby was born prematurely and was prescribed sodium chloride.

The pharmacy in the hospital made an error and released a dose for the baby that was sixty times too much. The baby died, and the parents filed an infant wrongful death lawsuit. They were awarded $8.25 million over the tragic mistake.[3]

Misdiagnoses

Doctors can also make mistakes in diagnosing conditions an infant is born with or develops shortly after birth. Some of these conditions are life-threatening if not diagnosed and treated quickly.

Infections, congenital disabilities, genetic conditions, hemorrhages or bleeding in the brain, respiratory distress syndrome, and kernicterus, a condition caused by jaundice, can all cause wrongful death if they are not recognized and treated.

In some cases, it is not routine to test for a condition, and the signs are not obvious. However, there are plenty of instances in which a condition should have been detected and treated.

If You Lost a Newborn

Infant wrongful death is a terrible situation for everyone. The medical caregiver who made a mistake can never take that mistake back, and the parents can never get their baby back.

If you experienced this tragedy as a parent, you may be able to show that your doctor or a hospital was to blame. You may have a case for an infant wrongful death lawsuit. Compensation will not bring your child back, but it can help with related expenses.

Contact an experienced lawyer to review your options and take legal action to seek a settlement. They should have proven experience with birth injury and medical malpractice cases.