Calculating the Long-Term Costs of Birth Injuries
When a birth injury occurs, the long-term consequences can be catastrophic for both the child and their family. This video explores the process of seeking compensation to ensure a child has the lifelong resources they need.
Key Topics Covered:
The Goal of Legal Action: Securing the financial resources necessary to support a child throughout their life [00:12].
Economic vs. Non-Economic Damages: Understanding the difference between quantifiable costs, like medical bills and lost wages, and intangible factors like pain and suffering [00:52].
Evaluating Long-Term Needs: How specialists, including pediatric neurologists and physiatrists, help determine the full extent of a child's injury [01:12].
Developing a Life Care Plan: The process of calculating lifelong costs, from home healthcare and medications to specialized vehicles and home remodeling [01:36].
The Role of Experts: Why medical and financial specialists are critical for presenting a comprehensive case to a jury [02:14].
Pursuing a birth injury claim is about more than just a legal battle; it's about providing the best possible quality of life for your child.
For more information:
Salvi, Schostok & Pritchard P.C.
161 N. Clark Street, Suite 4700
Chicago, Illinois 60601
https://www.salvilaw.com/
Phone: (312) 372-1227
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Transcript
Matt Williams:
Whenever there's a birth injury, that can have catastrophic consequences for the child, which will have long-term ramifications. One of the goals in pursuing a case on behalf of that child is to try to make sure that that child has the resources he or she is going to need for the rest of her life or his life. What we do to accomplish that is we evaluate what are the future medical needs for that child and what are the cost of those needs. Those are economic damages that can be pursued in a case involving a birth injury. It can be very, very expensive to provide all the resources necessary to allow these children to live the most fulfilling life that they can. One of the goals in taking case and prosecuting cases is to make sure all of those economic resources are available to them. Those are called economic damages. It's the lost wages because they're unable to work, and it's the medical expenses that are going to be needed in order to take care that child for the rest of his or her life. That is in addition to the non-economic damages, which is totally different than economic.
Those are pain and suffering, loss of a normal life, and disfigurement, which are also allowed to claim a trial. So, in order to determine what the economic damages are, plaintiffs often times will hire specialists who are pediatric neurologists. They'll hire doctors who are physiatrists. They specialize in physical medicine and rehabilitation. What they do is they evaluate the child, they look at the MRI imaging. They determine what the full nature and extent of that injury is. Then they determine the costs associated with care to take care of that child. That might be home health care. That might be wheelchair vans. That might be remodeling of homes. It might be medications. It might be visits to different specialists that these kids are going to need throughout the rest of their life. We look at all of those different costs and all of those different buckets, and we put it all together into what's called a life care plan. Then we present that life care plan to the jury, and they evaluate it, and they determine, number one, are those services reasonable and necessary, and are the costs of those services the usual and customary costs for those services?
All of that is provided by specialists and experts in the different areas of medicine that help us pursue these cases.
