Our client is a young girl living with cerebral palsy. It was her family’s case that a delay in carrying out an emergency caesarean section around the time of her birth left her deprived of oxygen for too long, and that this caused or contributed to a brain injury and her cerebral palsy. Her claim against the HSE was resolved without admission of liability, with a settlement structured to provide for the lifelong care she will need.
A child with cerebral palsy of this severity will need care and support for the rest of her life, and the purpose of the claim was to make sure that support is there. The settlement was reached outside court and combined a confidential lump sum with a periodic payment order, which provides regular payments for the child’s lifetime and is reviewed every ten years.
How the claim was investigated
Rose Sweeney acted for the family. In a medical negligence claim the standard of care is measured by the test set out by the Supreme Court in Dunne v National Maternity Hospital [1989] IR 91, and claims of this kind are pursued directly through the courts rather than the Injuries Resolution Board.
The central questions were whether the emergency caesarean section should have been carried out sooner, and whether the delay caused or contributed to the oxygen deprivation and the resulting brain injury.
Because of the seriousness of the injury and the lifelong needs it creates, a multi-disciplinary team of independent experts was instructed, both to address those questions and to set out the full extent of the care, therapy, equipment and support the child will need throughout her life. That evidence was central to establishing the claim and to valuing what the settlement would need to provide.
The outcome
The case was settled outside court, without admission of liability by the HSE. The settlement combined a confidential lump sum with a periodic payment order that will provide for the child’s care for the rest of her life, reviewed every ten years. Resolving the matter by agreement meant the family did not have to go through a contested hearing.
How Coleman Legal helped
Rose Sweeney handled this case for the family from the outset. She assembled the multi-disciplinary expert evidence needed to establish both what had gone wrong and the scale of the child’s future needs, and worked towards a settlement designed to fund that care for the whole of the child’s life. The periodic payment order gives the family the security of knowing that support will continue year after year.
