$32 Million Awarded by Jury in Birth Injury Medical Malpractice Case

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A Delaware jury has awarded $32.8 million in a birth injury malpractice case involving Phoenixville Hospital. One local media oulet reported, “The verdict came late Friday after the panel of eight men and four women deliberated more than nine hours in the case of Lily Ciechoski, who suffers from spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy. The jury found that the nurses had improperly failed to alert the girl’s mother’s doctor about a drastic change in the baby’s heart rate for 13 minutes during labor.” The $32.8 million verdict is believed to be the largest medical malpractice verdict in the history of Chester County. According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, cerebral palsy “refers to any one of a number of neurological disorders that appear in infancy or early childhood and permanently affect body movement and muscle coordination but don’t worsen over time. Even though cerebral palsy affects muscle movement, it isn’t caused by problems in the muscles or nerves. It is caused by abnormalities in parts of the brain that control muscle movements. The majority of children with cerebral palsy are born with it, although it may not be detected until months or years later. The early signs of cerebral palsy usually appear before a child reaches 3 years of age. The most common are a lack of muscle coordination when performing voluntary movements (ataxia); stiff or tight muscles and exaggerated reflexes (spasticity); walking with one foot or leg dragging; walking on the toes, a crouched gait, or a “scissored” gait; and muscle tone that is either too stiff or too floppy. A small number of children have cerebral palsy as the result of brain damage in the first few months or years of life, brain infections such as bacterial meningitis or viral encephalitis, or head injury from a motor vehicle accident, a fall, or child abuse.”

Mark Abramson
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