How Lawyers Quantify Future Costs for a Birth Injury Case: Life-Care Plans, Lost Earning Capacity & More
Birth injuries are unlike other personal injury cases; while most involve a recovery that spans months or years, birth injuries can affect a child for the rest of their life. Families face not only the new needs of their newborn and their own grief for what their child has lost, but a practical question: what will our child need in the future and how will we ever afford it?
In birth injury cases, compensation is not limited to past medical bills and may include future, lifetime needs when those damages are proven with reasonable certainty. However, calculating that number is incredibly difficult, especially when you’re also managing your own pain and shock from a birth gone wrong. That’s where our team steps in to help. At Crandall & Pera Law, we advocate for parents whose lives are left changed forever by a care provider’s decisions. Call us today to get started.
What “future damages” mean in a birth injury case
Future damages are costs a child is reasonably expected to incur in the future as a result of the injury. These damages go beyond the expenses already incurred and account for all of the challenges the baby is likely to face in the future as a result of the alleged malpractice, if proven. In this type of case, future damages may include:
- Ongoing medical care and treatment
- Long-term rehabilitation
- Occupational, physical, and speech therapy
- Special education
- Developmental services
- Home and vehicle modifications
- Around-the-clock nursing care in severe cases
- Lost earning capacity
- Pain, suffering, and reduced quality of life
The role of life-care plans
When you’re holding your medically fragile newborn, it’s impossible to fully imagine and understand the needs they’ll face for the rest of their life. That’s why life-care plans are an important part of birth injury cases. This is a comprehensive document that explains a child’s likely medical and support needs throughout their lifetime, based on their diagnosis and current limitations. Life-care planners typically have experience working with catastrophic injuries and collaborate with medical professionals to assess future care needs. They work alongside physicians, therapists, and others to determine what type of care a baby may need going forward.
This ensures that you don’t have to guess when it comes to future costs. It also makes it harder for insurance companies to claim that your numbers are unsubstantiated or inflated.
Estimating the cost of long-term therapy and support
Therapy is one of the most significant expenses a family may face after their child suffers a birth injury. Children left with neurological or physical impairments often require therapy multiple times per week for at least the early years of their life, if not forever. When calculating the cost of these treatments, birth injury attorneys consider:
- The types of therapy likely to be required
- Frequency and duration of sessions
- Changes a child may face as they age
- How the cost of services may change with time
Individual sessions may seem manageable, especially with insurance. But when your child is seeing multiple specialists multiple times per week, it adds up to a substantial amount of money over the years.
Special education and developmental services
Children who suffer birth injuries often require specialized educational support as children and day programming as adults. Future cost estimates in this area often account for early intervention services, special education programs, one-on-one aides, classroom accommodation costs, private tutoring or therapies, and transition services for children moving into adulthood and the service options available for adults.
Courts may consider these costs even when public programs are currently available, depending on the reliability and long-term availability of those benefits. Your child deserves coverage even if the government no longer funds their programs.
Home and vehicle modifications
These changes alone can add up to tens of thousands of dollars very quickly. A child with significant medical and developmental needs may need a wheelchair, specialized lifts, assisted standing devices, and specialized restroom and shower equipment. This results in the need for wheelchair ramps, widened doorways, accessible rooms, stair lifts or elevators, and specialized vehicles. Your child doesn’t just need these modifications once – these changes will need to be replaced and upgraded as time passes.
Lost earning capacity
Lost earning capacity may seem like an unusual consideration when we’re talking about a newborn’s birth injury, but without the injury, the child would likely have benefited from a full career worth of earnings, promotions, and benefits. Lost earning capacity accounts for the money that the child would have earned had they been able to participate in the workforce. Even if a child is likely to retain some ability to work, they may be entitled to lost earning capacity compensation if what they can do does not pay as much as what they would have been able to do.
Pain and suffering
Not all losses in birth injury cases are financial in nature; birth injuries have a ripple effect on every part of a child’s life. Their ability to communicate, move independently, participate in everyday activities, socialize, and enjoy life may be impacted by their injury. Non-economic damages compensate for pain, suffering, and loss of enjoyment of life resulting from the injury.
Why birth injury damages can appear high
Families are often surprised by the amount of projected damages in severe birth injury cases, but it makes sense when you consider that these calculations reflect a child’s lifetime needs. Consider this: a 50-year-old adult injured by someone else’s negligence may only have 15 years left in the workforce. Any adaptations made to their home will last much longer, since they’re not expected to continue growing or developing. As a result, damages in similar injury cases may be lower for older adults than for children or infants with comparable injuries.
A baby, though, has their entire life ahead of them. Smaller costs multiplied over the decades grow very quickly. The money parents receive is meant to ensure that a child has access to what they need for the rest of their life.
Choose Crandall & Pera Law for your birth injury case
Our team of birth injury lawyers is here to help you pursue compensation after medical malpractice leaves your baby with a serious birth injury. This is an emotionally challenging and demanding time. Let us handle your legal needs while you support your baby. Contact us online or call us today.