On Friday, January 17, a jury in Pennsylvania decided that two nurses were negligent in how they monitored a pregnant mother and her baby during delivery, and that this negligence resulted in the woman's daughter being born with brain injuries. The jury awarded the girl, who has cerebral palsy, $32.8 million for medical malpractice.

It took the jury of 12 people more than nine hours to examine this case. They decided that the nurses had failed in their duty to tell the doctor about the baby's heart rate, which changed dramatically for thirteen minutes while the mother was in labor. Because of this and other problems during delivery, the baby sustained brain damage and now has spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy. The attorney advocating on her behalf said that this negligence would be like someone failing to notify a pilot for an entire 13 minutes that "an airplane [was] going into a nose dive".

There was an additional nurse present during the pregnancy, and the jury decided that this nurse was not negligent. They also decided that the hospital was off the hook for this medical malpractice. The doctor in the case was removed from the list of defendants halfway into the trial.

According to the girl's lawyer, when the mother went to the hospital to give birth, she was close to the due date, and there were no serious concerns in her case. As she went into labor, however, the baby's heart rate soon plummeted from a healthy 150 beats per minute to a mere 60 beats per minute. Their lawyer said that the umbilical cord was keeping the child's brain from getting oxygen.

There were two nurses present who saw this change in the baby's heart rate, but they said nothing to the doctor about it. Thirteen whole minutes later, the doctor entered the room and looked at the heart rate monitor and at once called for an emergency cesarean section delivery. Still, it took those nurses nine more minutes to inform their supervisor. It took almost ten more minutes for them to get an anesthesiologist on the case. Thirteen minutes after that point, the baby was delivered. In all, that comes to more than a half hour of delays. A medical expert in the trial said that if the delivery had come 15 to 17 minutes sooner, then the baby would have sustained minor brain injuries, or no injuries whatsoever.

The girl, who is four years old now, walked in front of the jury to show how she struggles to walk. She also has spasms in her arms and legs. She also struggles to move her neck, and she can barely speak. The jury agreed with her lawyer that the nurses failed to meet the standard of care. The jury's multi-million dollar verdict can help pay for the girl's ongoing medical treatment. The award in this case is also significant because it may be one of the highest jury awards in Chester County's history, even though the area is often seen as an area where medical malpractice cases fail.

While compensation can never truly undo the harm inflicted by malpractice, it can enable families to overcome the financial burdens thrust in their way so that they can afford the medical care needed after there has been a serious medical error. Not every single medical error is an instance of medical malpractice, however. To find out if you have a medical malpractice case, be sure to consult an experienced medical malpractice attorney. If you are looking for the best medical malpractice lawyer possible, you can starting looking for the legal advocate you need on our directory today!