Medical Center Accused of Malpractice Causing Death of Four Babies and Injuries to a Fifth

A medical center has been accused of negligence resulting in four babies dying at delivery or shortly thereafter, as well as serious injuries to a fifth child. Five young mothers all filed separate medical malpractice lawsuits charging the facility with giving themselves and their children inadequate medical care. They came together to hold a press conference to tell their stories of how similarly things resulting in dead or injured newborns had happened at the medical center over and over again.

In one instance, one of the grieving mothers lamented that she never had the opportunity to even look into her child's eyes or hear her baby make a sound. What should have been a beautiful experience was transformed into a nightmare.

One of the mothers, a 17-year-old, wept so much that she couldn't finish telling reporters how much she loved her newborn daughter and had been thrilled to hold her for the first time. A brief four days later, however, her child was dead, with little in the way of explanation from the hospital or doctors.

Each of the mothers are poor and come from minority communities. The question of whether that factored into the substandard medical care they say they received is being looked into by their attorney. A number of them now fear that they will never experience the joy of being a mother, and may themselves grow old and die without children.

One mother stated that she also believed that the medical center had outright lied to her about exactly what happened to her baby. She explained that she was ultimately told that her baby had died around 72 hours before, when she later learned that it had happened only about one day before. This led her to question why anyone would lie about what had happened.

The one plaintiffs child who survived after being born at the facility has had her second birthday. Her delivery too, however, her parents say, was extremely troubling. She essentially became stuck for an extended period of time and started turning blue and purple, with no effective steps taken on an urgent basis to prevent her being seriously injured.

Today, two years later, her right arm still does not function properly due to nerve palsy, interfering with her everyday life and even damaging her ability to play as other children do. Unfortunately, children exhibiting such disabilities are often cruelly bullied or ostracized by others and denied many opportunities in life.

When such tragedies happen, medical malpractice lawsuits are important for the purpose of providing compensation to the victimized families and to provide for the ongoing care of the surviving injured children, such as the disabled two year old girl, who may need therapy and other treatment. But it is also absolutely essential to make sure that repeated tragedies like this don't simply go on occurring and that more children aren't killed or maimed.