Brain Damage

Brain damage is sometimes the result of a preventable birth injury or other instance of medical malpractice. During a baby's delivery, mistakes or negligence on the part of the delivery team can cause serious, even permanent, brain damage that may necessitate a lifetime of medical care.

At The Berkowitz Law Firm, our medical malpractice attorneys have the medical knowledge and legal experience to obtain fair and satisfactory compensation for the families of patients suffering such losses.

Common Causes of Brain Damage at Birth

The brain damage that occurs shortly before, during or soon after a baby's delivery is often due to:

a lack of blood flow or oxygen, or
trauma that is a result of too much force being used, e.g. with forceps or vacuum extractors

These causes may have been unavoidable, or they may have been due to substandard, inadequate medical care.

Types of Brain Damage

There are several types of brain damage that a newborn may incur as a birth injury, including:

Cerebral palsy
Loss of oxygen supply to the brain
Intracranial hemorrhage (bleeding in the baby's head)
Cranial nerve trauma
Cephalohematoma (an area of bleeding beneath the scalp)
Swelling or bruising of the brain

Symptoms of Brain Damage

An infant who suffers a brain injury at birth may show signs or symptoms of the damage immediately. However, the child may seem normal and healthy at birth, showing the signs of the damage much later, when the parents realize that their baby is not meeting the usual growth markers for being able to:

hold its head up
sit up
crawl
babble and talk
walk

Motor and speech skill limitations, seizures, and mental retardation are signs of brain damage that may have been caused by medical negligence.

Brain Damage in Older Patients

In children, adolescents, adults and the elderly, brain damage may occur due to unavoidable accidents. When the damage is due to medical malpractice or to the negligence or intentional harm of another, the attorneys at the Berkowitz Law Firm are ready to help. We understand that brain damage is one of the most severe and life-altering misfortunes that can happen to an individual and his or her family.

The medical bills, rehabilitation costs, and loss of physical and mental capacity alone can be devastating, and the emotional anguish can seem overwhelming. We counsel and represent people whose lives have been impacted by brain damage, and we strive to obtain the best possible legal outcome for our clients.

Click here to contact a Berkowitz Law Firm Connecticut brain damage attorney in Stamford, Connecticut or Danbury, CT today.

Meet the Attorneys

Recent Headlines at Berkowitz and Reinken

Russ Berkowitz has recently recovered $810,000.00 against a local high school and its school administrators and coaches on behalf of a high school student who sustained a fractured neck during an unsupervised, after school, off-season wrestling practice in the school’s gymnasium.

$2,450,000.00 total award against a hospital for its failure to properly restrain a hospital psychiatric patient who jumped out of a hospital window and fell three stories sustaining a permanent brain injury. Eric Blomberg and Russ Berkowitz represented the plaintiff.

Russ Berkowitz has been selected as a 2010 Super Lawyer...

$4,750,000.00 medical malpractice award on behalf of a child who sustained brain damage as a result of a hospital's negligent airway management.

$9,000,000.00 medical malpractice recovery against an obstetrician and a hospital whose failure to timely deliver the infant plaintiff, despite signs of fetal distress, left her severely brain damaged.

$6,100,000.00 settlement against a hospital and two physicians on behalf of a client who sustained permanent paralysis.

Joanne Sheehan recently settled a medical malpractice case for $1,800,000.00 against an optometrist who caused a female plaintiff to sustain permanent vision loss in both eyes following the improper administration of ophthalmic steroids despite said optometrist's knowledge of the plaintiff's history of steroid induced eye pressure.

$4,000,000.00 medical malpractice verdict

$2,600,000.00 wrongful death verdict