$2.25 Million for Brooklyn Infant

We achieved the settlement in this case in December 2008 after several years of hard fought litigation. This child was born just after midnight on Christmas day in a Manhattan hospital after his mother had endured 12 hours of induction with an "experimental" procedure. Ordinarily, drugs called prepadil or cervadil are used to help a woman's cervix open if it does not open naturally. However, in this case the hospital tired to take advantage of this mother (who only spoke Bengali) and tried out a method of cervical ripening which is used exclusively in developing countries (where drugs are not available). This technique involves placing one end of a balloon catheter into the mother's cervix and inflating it, and then taping the other end to the inside of her leg so that slight pressure is applied to the cervix to help it open manually over time. Unfortunately, this method is far inferior to pharmaceutical cervical ripening and resulted in a long delay in this child being delivered.

As a result, the baby was born with oxygen deprivation. During the course of litigation we uncovered an article in a medical journal that the hospital published which revealed that this method of induction was known to them to be far inferior than using drugs. Unfortunately, they of course never explained to the mother that she was basically being used as a lab rat to be part of their study. After years of litigation and research, we were able to make the hospital take responsibility for what they did to this family. The money that they have received will be invested in special annuities that will provide this child with life long therapies and medical care.