A mother has made a successful medical negligence claim, after her daughter sustained serve injuries at birth, which went on to lead to her developing cerebral palsy.

The incident took place in June 2000, when she had been expecting her third child, a girl, and that up until the labour, everything was going well.

When the mother went into labour, she was taken to hospital but an hour after arriving, the woman started to suffer complications with the birth and asked doctors if she would need to have caesarean.

It took doctors nearly an hour before they acted on signs on foetal distress and carried out an emergency caesarean, according to her compensation claim.

Starved of oxygen

As a result of the time delay, the woman's daughter was starved of oxygen and now suffers from cerebral palsy. Her daughter now needs 24 hours care each day but was concerned about finances since having to stop work and was worried about how her daughter would cope as she grew older.

The woman decided to contact personal injury lawyers and make a no win no fee compensation claim to pay for the specialist care that her daughter would require in later life when she is no longer able to look after her.

The mother explained everything to a legal team which provided her with information in regards to making a no win no fee compensation claim.

The legal firm explained that this meant, if her claim was successful, neither they nor one of our personal injury lawyers would take a cut of the damages she would be awarded. The firm would receive their fee from the people they were taking to court - in this case the hospital.

She decided to go ahead with making a claim for medical negligence and her case was then passed onto an experienced lawyer who dealt with every part of her case, which included obtaining all medical records.

Quick action could have prevented damage

The solicitor made contact with the hospital's appropriate Strategic Health Authority (SHA) and put forward the compensation claims, stating that if the girl had been delivered earlier when signs of complications were first made evident, that she would not have suffered brain damage and developed cerebral palsy.

After several months of negations and talks between the personal injury solicitor and the SHA, the SHA admitted full liability for medical negligence and agreed to pay the mother an undisclosed sum of damages for her compensation claim, which would be paid as an initial interim payment with further payments to follow over the years.

The woman was pleased with the outcome of her no win no fee compensation and said: "This money will allow my daughter to lead as normal a life as possible and provide financial security to pay for her future care.

"I can't thank the legal team enough, I thought that making a compensation claim would cause a great deal of stress for me and my family but they handled every aspect of the claim and took the strain off my shoulders."

She concluded: "Most importantly they stayed true to their word and didn't take a single penny of the compensation awarded for my daughter's birth injuries."