$17.5 Million Settlement During Trial of Illinois Cerebral Palsy Case

Attorneys Daniel S. Weinstock, G. Scott Vezina and Carolyn M. Chopko obtained 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, in July 2011 when the mother 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 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.

Attorneys Weinstock, Vezina, and Chopko were able to establish that the doctors failed to keep up with contemporary obstetric practice and that the hospital perpetrated a fraud by failing to document the secondary medication error and continued to cover up the error during the litigation.