Lawsuit for childbirth injury from a poorly equipped delivery room?

Whether a hospital can be sued for childbirth malpractice from not having the proper or adequate equipment to handle an emergency birth depends on the type of emergency and how the inadequacy affected the child. Essentially, the emergency must have been reasonably foreseeable and of the type that a normal hospital would prepare for.

A childbirth malpractice case is the same as any other medical malpractice case. As such, it must contain four elements: duty, breach, causation and damages. A duty arises anytime a hospital agrees to care for a patient, in this instance a mother in labor. A breach of that duty arises whenever the hospital's actions and behavior do not accord with what a hospital should or would normally do under the circumstances. Causation refers to there being a link between the hospital's actions and the injury that befell the baby. Damages refer to the physical or mental injuries, illnesses or other disabilities the hospital caused the baby.

The most difficult element to prove when claiming that a hospital was ill-equipped to handle a childbirth emergency is the hospital's breach. In this circumstance, the hospital would have committed a breach by not having properly trained staff or doctors, the right equipment or inadequate procedures in place to handle the emergency. The plaintiff must prove that the hospital's standards, equipment or techniques were not those of a normal hospital and that the hospital should have known about the need to update its methods or medical equipment. The plaintiff must also demonstrate that the type of emergency presented was not so unusual as to be unforeseeable.

If you want to know if you can sue a hospital for injuries that befell your baby during an emergency delivery, seek legal advice. An attorney will review the facts of your case and discuss your legal options with you.