$17.5 Million Settlement During Trial of Illinois Cerebral Palsy Case

In the Spring of 2018, Feldman Shepherd attorneys Daniel S. Weinstock, G. Scott Vezina, and Carolyn M. Chopko secured a 17.5 million settlement in favor of a mom-to-be whose obstetric providers failed to treat her with injectable progesterone throughout her high-risk pregnancy in order to prevent a recurrence of extreme preterm labor. Because of the OB’s mistake, she went into labor at only 22 ½  weeks of gestation.

Making matters worse, when she was in the hospital in preterm labor, a nurse who was supposed to give a drug to try to slow down the labor accidentally administered a drug that induces contractions and only expedited the delivery.

As a combined result of these two acts of medical negligence, her newborn baby boy was delivered with a birth weight of only 1 lb., 4 oz. The extreme prematurity caused by the negligence of the doctor and nurse caused the baby to suffer a bilateral Grade 4 ventricular hemorrhage, which ultimately led to cerebral palsy and severe developmental delays.

Daniel S. Weinstock, lead counsel for the plaintiff, stated “This catastrophic outcome was totally preventable. Unfortunately, the doctors in this case just dropped the ball, and failed keep up with contemporary obstetric practice. We were very proud to successfully represent this family, and to uncover the fraud the hospital perpetrated by failing to document the secondary medication error and then continuing the cover-up during the litigation. This is a case which proves that sometimes justice can only be obtained when an injured person fights relentlessly to assert his or her legal rights.