One question we’re often asked is: how do I start a birth injury claim? How do I get this off the ground? First step is to reach out to a lawyer with proven experience in birth injury litigation. That lawyer will help you request all the records that are needed in order to assess the merits of the claim. Here in Canada, medical professionals are required to keep records for a 10-year period from the last treatment. As it relates to children, newborns, those records related to the birth have to be kept by the physician or the health authority, the hospital, for 10 years after the child turns 19, and so they’re there even if we’re talking about something that is perhaps historic in nature. And experienced lawyers who do this work and help families with birth injury claims know how to get the records.
Once the lawyer gets the records, he or she will typically work with an experienced medical expert to assess where things went wrong, what could have been prevented, and then, using that information, will draft a lawsuit making general allegations of negligence and also the specific allegations which are learned about through the consultation of medical experts. Once that claim is filed, gets served on the doctors or nurses and then off to their insurance company, who will, you know, hire a lawyer to defend their interests. For more information about that type of process, about the litigation process, check out some of our other videos where we’ve gone into more detail.
