Kansas City Cerebral Palsy Attorney

Finding out that your child has cerebral palsy can be devastating. Cerebral palsy is an irreversible neurological disorder that negatively impacts the entire life of a diagnosed child and also creates a significant amount of heartache, stress, and financial difficulty for the family.

Cerebral palsy has many potential causes, one of which may be negligence on behalf of the medical practitioner during the birthing process. If you suspect medical malpractice played a role in the development of your child’s cerebral palsy, an attorney may help you understand your legal options and pursue justice and financial compensation.

Close up of child's hand who has cerebral palsy. If you baby was recently diagnosed with cerebral palsy, our cerebral palsy attorneys in Kansas City can help.

How a Cerebral Palsy Attorney Can Help You

After receiving a cerebral palsy diagnosis for your child, you may feel overwhelmed and unsure of what to do next. Cerebral palsy attorneys can listen to you and investigate the childbirth to determine whether medical malpractice caused your child’s injury.

If it’s revealed that medical negligence did indeed cause your child’s condition, your Kansas City cerebral palsy lawyer can then help you understand your legal options. They can also file the claim and communicate with the defendant’s insurance company on your behalf.

An experienced lawyer who has successfully handled similar cerebral palsy cases in Kansas City can then collect evidence to prove the defendant’s liability and also your damages. And they can work tirelessly to obtain compensation from the medical professionals responsible for your child’s disorder.

Pursue Full and Fair Compensation for Your Losses

Birth injury cases such as this are often very challenging for individuals to win without proper legal representation. One reason is that healthcare providers and their insurers often employ strategies to refute a claim.

They also frequently attempt to persuade claimants to accept lowball settlement offers. Without the guidance of a lawyer, claimants often make the mistake of accepting these initial lowball offers, receiving far less money than they have a right to recover.

Experienced attorneys know how to counter these strategies and negotiate effectively to maximize settlements for their clients. As the parent of the injured child, you have a right to recover a full and fair settlement for the enormous emotional and financial toll that cerebral palsy has had on your family.

Why Choose Our Cerebral Palsy Attorneys?

Our Kansas City cerebral palsy attorneys tailor our legal tactics based on each client’s unique goals for a case. We will listen to your needs and provide our best legal advice accordingly.
We have years of practice area experience in personal injury law. Our attorneys know how to handle complex medical malpractice and cerebral palsy claims.
We keep your budget in mind by offering our services on a contingency fee basis. Our lawyers do not charge anything unless they win the case in question.

When to Contact a Medical Malpractice Lawyer

Reach out to an attorney about your child’s cerebral palsy as soon as you make a possible connection to medical malpractice. You will most likely need a cerebral palsy attorney’s help with the claims process. The insurance company of the physician or hospital will use tactics to get you to accept a lowball settlement. Hiring a lawyer allows you to combat these tactics with proven negotiation strategies. Your lawyer will fight for maximum compensation for your child’s irreversible damages and your family’s related bills. With help from a lawyer, you can have the peace of mind you need to focus on your child’s future.

What Is Cerebral Palsy?

Cerebral palsy is a neurological condition caused by damage to a child’s developing brain before, during, or directly after childbirth. Cerebral palsy affects the child’s quality of precise body movement, muscle tone, reflexes, balance, and posture.

What Are the Symptoms of Cerebral Palsy?

A child diagnosed with cerebral palsy will often have trouble meeting developmental milestones in fine and gross motor skills.

In general, you may notice some of the following symptoms in your child:

Lack of muscle coordination
Difficulty feeding
Delays in meeting developmental milestones
Favoring one side of the body
Seizures
Difficulty with precise motions (fine motor skills)

It can take months or years for a doctor to diagnose cerebral palsy in your child. More severe cases will be easier to diagnose at a younger age. It is important to talk to a Kansas City cerebral palsy attorney as soon as you receive a diagnosis. This may be the date the clock starts ticking on your statute of limitations to file an injury claim. In Kansas and Missouri, you have two years from the date of medical malpractice discovery to file a claim.

How Medical Malpractice May Cause Cerebral Palsy

Cerebral palsy may result from various forms of infection, physical trauma, or fetal distress that lead to brain damage during childbirth. It’s possible for a doctor or nurse to cause or contribute to cerebral palsy by committing a medical error before, during, or after birth.

Examples of Potential Birthing Errors

Failure to deliver the baby when there were clear signs of fetal distress is one common cause of cerebral palsy.

When there is any clear indication of distress in the infant, a negligent delay in delivering the baby or performing an emergency c-section may cause brain damage and cerebral palsy. Failure to properly monitor the fetal heart rate or respond to a drop in heart rate might be another cause of the disorder.

Failure to actively treat jaundice, check maternal and fetal blood types, properly monitor the child’s condition, or reduce the risk of a head injury may also cause cerebral palsy. The misuse of birthing tools such as forceps or vacuum extractors can also cause brain injuries in newborn children.

What are the Types of Cerebral Palsy?

In order to classify what type of cerebral palsy your child has, your doctor will assess which type of movement disorder is evident. One or more areas of the brain can be involved and can affect your child’s movements in 1 of 3 ways, such as stiff muscles (spasticity), uncontrollable movements (dyskinesia), and poor balance and coordination (ataxia). Overall, there are 4 main types of cerebral palsy that children are diagnosed as:

Spastic Cerebral Palsy

This type of cerebral palsy affects about 80% of people with the disorder. It results in stiff muscles, which can cause awkward movements due to the increased muscle tone.

Dyskinetic Cerebral Palsy

People with this type of cerebral palsy have trouble with controlling the movement of their legs, arms, and feet. Their muscle tone can change throughout the day or from day to day.

Ataxic Cerebral Palsy

People who have Ataxic cerebral palsy have difficulty controlling their arms when reaching for something. The biggest thing they struggle with is balance and coordination.

Mixed Cerebral Palsy

People with a mixture of the ailments associated with the different types of cerebral palsy will be classified as mixed cerebral palsy.

At Wendt Law Firm P.C., we understand how the different types of cerebral palsy affect patients. Our lawyers can demonstrate the physical, emotional, and financial toll you or your child’s condition has had on your life. Then, we can use evidence, medical expert testimony, and presentation technology to demonstrate your losses to a jury. Our trial lawyers know how to obtain the best possible results for seriously injured clients.

How Will Cerebral Palsy Affect My Child?

Little boy with cerebral palsy in a special chair at school. Our Kansas City lawyers can help if your child has been diagnosed with cerebral palsy due to a birth injury.

A child with CP often shows signs of physical impairment, but the extent of this impairment varies widely from one person to another. CP affects the way a person controls their muscles, but some individuals will contract them too much while others contract them too little. In other cases, frequent muscle contractions will cause tremors that affect balance, coordination, and posture. Seizures, co-occurring intellectual disability, and hearing and vision problems are also possible. Even in mild cases, CP often affects a child’s quality of life and ability to function like their typically developing peers.

How To Recover Compensation for Your Child’s Cerebral Palsy

Medical malpractice lawsuits involving a birth injury in Kansas City usually require an experienced lawyer to handle and win. In order to successfully pursue legal action and recover compensation from the at-fault parties, you must prove that the doctor acted with negligence and that their negligence resulted in your child’s disorder.

To prove a doctor’s negligence, you must show that they breached a duty of care owed to you and your child. This usually requires a thorough investigation into the incident.

You Need Evidence To Support Your Claim

In Kansas City, proving the defendant’s negligence often requires a mountain of evidence. This might include various medical experts to clarify what happened and testify in court.

Kansas City cerebral palsy attorneys specialize in building these cases. It takes a skillful attorney with appropriate legal know-how and experience to persuade a judge and jury to award fair financial compensation.

Calculating Damages in a Cerebral Palsy Case

Your Kansas City cerebral palsy attorney can calculate the full damages you have a right to pursue. Your damages may include future medical expenses for specialist care and treatment.

You may also be able to claim damages for future lost income if your job and career are disrupted by your child’s disorder. Pain and suffering damages may also be included for the emotional hardship this injury has brought upon you and your child.

Without an experienced Kansas City cerebral palsy lawyer by your side, it can be extremely difficult to understand the full damages you have a right to claim.

When To Speak to a Cerebral Palsy Lawyer

Following birth, it can take months or even years for children to be diagnosed. As soon as you receive a diagnosis, the statute of limitations in Kansas City places a two-year deadline to legally pursue a medical malpractice claim or lawsuit.

It’s therefore best to speak to an attorney without delay. Medical malpractice cases often take a long time to resolve, and once the two-year deadline has passed, you’ll no longer be able to file a lawsuit.

Experienced Kansas City cerebral palsy attorneys know how to keep the process moving forward steadily.

If you’d like an experienced medical malpractice attorney to handle your case in Kansas City, contact Wendt Law Firm P.C. at 816-542-6734 for a free consultation. Our award-winning attorneys have won over 1,000 successful cases and can help you recover the fair compensation you deserve.