Family Gets $18M After Birthing Defect

A judge approved an $18.2 million settlement from the government for a Milwaukee, Wis., family whose daughter suffered brain damage during birth at a federally funded clinic.

The lawsuit was argued in U.S. District Court because the clinic where the birthing complications occurred was a community health center funded by the federal government.

Euel Kinsey, the family’s attorney, said the settlement will be paid from a fund the government maintains to back the community health centers.

When Jacqueline Lugo gave birth in 1998, her daughter was stuck in the birth canal for more than 20 minutes, and the girl sustained severe brain injury due to lack of oxygen, Kinsey said. The daughter will need assistance for the rest of her life, he said.

In court papers, federal lawyers said the family failed to prove how the government was at fault. There may have been negligence, the documents acknowledge, but it was on the part of people over whom the government had no responsibility. The settlement was approved July 8.

Lugo was 37 and pregnant in 1997, court records show. In June 1998 a clinic physician advised her to go to a Milwaukee hospital for a drug treatment that would induce birth. But the baby became stuck in the birth canal. The child survived and later received follow-up treatment for seizure disorder, developmental delay and severe cerebral palsy.