Birth Injury Compensation

Common injuries that a child may sustain at the time of birth include brain injury, Erb’s palsy and lacerations or other physical injuries from the use of instruments to facilitate delivery. A child may also suffer a cardiac arrest prior to delivery and may not survive labour and delivery. 

Injuries that a woman could sustain during birth include the following:

• Tears to the perineum
• Deep lacerations to the birth canal
• Injury to the pelvic floor
• Incontinence of bladder
• Incontinence of bowel
• Requirement for prolonged medical or surgical treatment
• Significant blood loss 
• Fistula formation
• Death

If you are a woman who sustained a birth injury caused by negligence, you can claim compensation for your injury. If your child has sustained a birth injury, your child may claim compensation. 

Parents may also claim compensation for a pure psychiatric injury that they may have developed as a result of witnessing the events surrounding, and allegedly causing, injury to their child.

To be entitled to compensation for birth injuries, you must be able to prove negligence. This means that you must prove that there was a failure to provide you or your child with reasonable care during the management of your pregnancy, labour and/or delivery, and that this failure was a necessary condition of you or your child sustaining injury.

Ordinarily, you must commence formal legal proceedings within three years of the time at which the alleged negligence occurred. This is subject to the time that you discovered, or ought to have discovered, that you or your child have sustained an injury, the injury is the fault of a heathcare provider, and the injury is worth suing over.

If you succeed in proving that there was a failure to manage your labour and delivery with reasonable care and that your birth injury or your child’s birth injury was caused by this failure, you and/or your child will be entitled to compensation. Compensation may include pain and suffering, past and future treatment expenses, lost earnings and personal care and domestic assistance. 

Compensation for injury arising from a brain injury sustained by a child during birth is usually significant and is much needed to enable the child to access early intervention and have the best quality of life possible.

The value of a claim for compensation for birth injury will depend on the nature, extent and severity of the injuries, their impact on your life, and your prognosis. Compensation is determined by calculating your losses including treatment expenses and lost income and the cost of your ongoing requirements for treatment, personal care, and domestic assistance