Birth Injury Claims in Maryland: Recognizing Preventable Medical Errors During Delivery
Labor and delivery is one of the most closely monitored events in medicine. The baby’s heart rate is tracked continuously, the mother’s vital signs are recorded, and the care team is expected to act at the first sign of distress. That level of monitoring is exactly why so many birth injuries raise a difficult question. If the warning signs were on the screen, why did no one respond?
Our Maryland birth injury lawyers explain how to distinguish an unavoidable complication from a preventable medical error, and what state law requires to prove the difference.
Complication or Negligence? The Question That Defines a Birth Injury Claim
Not every poor outcome is malpractice. Some babies are injured despite excellent care. Under Section 3-2A-02 of the Maryland Courts and Judicial Proceedings Article, the question is whether the providers’ care fell below the standards of practice among similarly trained professionals.
In many strong cases, the complication itself was not the error. The error was in how the team recognized and responded to it. Hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE), a brain injury caused by oxygen deprivation around birth, affects roughly 1.5 to 2.5 of every 1,000 live births in developed countries, according to research published by the National Institutes of Health. Up to 60 percent of affected infants die or develop severe disabilities by age two. Errors that can often be traced through the medical record include:
- Failing to recognize or act on abnormal fetal heart rate patterns.
- Delaying an emergency C-section after clear signs of fetal distress.
- Using excessive force during shoulder dystocia, which can damage the nerves of the baby’s arm.
- Improper use of forceps or a vacuum extractor.
- Overusing labor-inducing drugs that overstimulate contractions and reduce oxygen to the baby.
- Missing maternal conditions such as preeclampsia or infection.
- Delaying cooling therapy for a newborn with signs of HIE, a treatment that is time-sensitive in the first hours of life.
What Maryland Law Requires, and Why the Clock Is Complicated
Birth injury claims demand more proof than most injury cases. The same statute sets strict qualifications for medical experts, who generally must be board certified in the same or a related specialty when the accused provider is. Fetal monitoring strips, nursing notes, and cord blood results often decide these cases.
The filing deadline is also layered. Section 5-109 generally gives malpractice claims the earlier of five years from the injury or three years from discovery, with separate provisions for young children. Maryland courts have held that a child’s own claim is generally preserved into adulthood, but the parents’ claims, including those for medical expenses during childhood, may follow a much shorter timeline. Families who wait because they believe they “have until the child turns 18” can lose a significant part of their recovery.
Conditions such as cerebral palsy often are not diagnosed until a child misses developmental milestones. If something about your delivery never made sense, it is worth asking questions now.
Get Clear Answers About Your Child’s Delivery
You trusted a medical team with the two most important people in your life. When that trust is broken, you deserve to know what really happened in the delivery room.
At Berman | Sobin | Gross LLP, we work with qualified medical experts to rebuild the delivery timeline minute by minute and pinpoint where care went wrong. Call or contact our office online to speak with our Maryland medical malpractice attorneys.
Sources:
mgaleg.maryland.gov/mgawebsite/Laws/StatuteText?article=gcj§ion=3-2A-02&enactments=false pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3171747/
