Birth Injury Role of a Lawyer
Any parent concerned with issues related to birth injury should obtain legal counsel specializing in medical malpractice, especially with a focus on birth injuries. The reason for this is that there is a great deal of complexity involved in establishing the causation necessary to link any injury or harm that a child suffered to any kind of medical malpractice during the child’s gestation or delivery process. Legal action will be available when a lawyer is confident that causation can be established to prove liability in the case.
To further understand the role of a lawyer in a Toronto birth injury case, it is imperative to contact legal representation. An experienced birth injury lawyer in Toronto can build a case to help maximize any potential compensation you may be owed.
Manifestation of an Injury
Usually, in cases of birth injuries, a lawyer will not want to sue too early, because they want to see how the injury or harm is manifesting during those early years of the child’s life while running the statutory limitation period extended over the course of the child’s legal minority.
Sometimes, a cognitive difficulty that a parent may feel attributable to some sort of medical negligence or malpractice on the part of the doctor may actually be a normal part of that particular child’s development.
On the other hand, sometimes, symptoms of harm from an injury sustained during child birth may not emerge until much later in the child’s life. Because the limitation period does not begin to run until the child reaches the age of majority, there may be up to 18 years to figure out exactly how the harm or injury is going to manifest itself in the child’s life and not just while they are minors, but also over the course of the child’s adult life.
A lawyer will typically want to act only when the most complete information is available. It may take time in terms of the child undergoing various testing and evaluation to try to understand what harms that child sustained that may have been caused by medical malpractice. However, it is the role of a lawyer to do what is best for their client in these circumstances.
Uniqueness of a Case
One of the most important aspects of birth injury cases that differentiates them from other types of personal injury is that they do not manifest the damage that they represent right away. For example, a child may sustain a brain injury during the birthing process. The results of that brain injury, in terms of the child’s normal growth and development and the child’s prospects to live a normal life in both personal and professional terms, may only become apparent years later.
In most personal injury cases, the person is acutely injured and it must be determined what that injury is and how it is going to affect their life. The complexity of birth injury cases is in tracing how the injuries developed and how the issues in the case represent what it means to make a person whole in relation to those injuries, which may have life time implications and dimensions. One of the most important roles of a lawyer in a Toronto birth injury case is to understand all the elements present to ensure a successful recovery.
Initial Steps
When beginning to craft a birth injury case, it is is the role of a lawyer to distinguish developmental issues that may be endemic to the child from injuries and damages that the child has suffered that are causally attributable to the negligence of a doctor or medical professional.
Lawyers strive to make that distinction by trying to understand both the operative particulars around the delivery process, the general condition of mother and child during the gestation period, and the present condition of the individual in question.
