Maternal injury claims concern harm to the mother arising from pregnancy, labour, delivery, or the post-partum period, as distinct from injury to the infant. Recurring fact patterns include mismanaged pre-eclampsia and eclampsia, post-partum haemorrhage, undiagnosed uterine rupture, retained products, surgical injury during caesarean section, anaesthetic complications, and failure to recognize and treat post-partum sepsis or venous thromboembolism.
These cases are clinically and emotionally significant, and they can involve catastrophic outcomes including hysterectomy, organ damage, acquired disability, and maternal death. The standard of care is proven through expert evidence from obstetrics, anaesthesia, critical care, and nursing, calibrated to the emergency as it presented, and causation often turns on the speed and adequacy of recognition and response to a deteriorating mother.
Posts tagged Maternal Injury analyze Ontario and other Canadian decisions involving harm to the mother arising from obstetric care.
The Court of Appeal affirmed a $12 million plaintiff verdict for catastrophic maternal brain injury, rejecting the defence theory of amniotic fluid embolism.
A failed obstetric epidural with a fractured needle did not prove substandard technique. The British Columbia court rejected outcome-based reasoning on both grounds.
A young mother left in a permanent vegetative state after C-section. The court found anesthesiology negligence but accepted that an amniotic fluid embolism was the unavoidable cause.
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