Pregnancy and childbirth can involve serious and sometimes life-threatening complications. Even when healthcare providers follow appropriate procedures and provide timely treatment, unexpected complications can still result in a mother’s death. For that reason, a maternal death alone does not establish that medical negligence occurred.
Medical negligence becomes a legal issue when a doctor, nurse, hospital, or other provider fails to meet the applicable standard of care and the failure causes the death.
Proving that connection requires more than showing that the outcome might have been preventable. Instead, attorneys must build the case through medical records, expert analysis, and evidence showing what providers knew, what they did, and how their actions affected the mother’s outcome.
What must a family prove in a maternal death case?
Medical malpractice cases generally center on four key elements: duty, breach, causation, and damages. Each element addresses a different part of the case, and the family typically must establish all four to support a medical malpractice claim.
First, a healthcare provider must have owed the mother a professional duty of care. The evidence must then show that the provider failed to meet the applicable standard of care under the circumstances. This may involve examining whether the provider recognized warning signs, responded appropriately to complications, or took reasonable steps to protect the mother’s health.
The next issue is causation. It is not enough to show that a healthcare provider made a mistake or failed to follow the expected standard of care. The evidence must also establish a connection between the negligent care and the mother’s death.
Finally, the claim must involve legally recognized losses or damages. Depending on state law, maternal death claims may involve losses such as medical and funeral expenses, lost financial support, household services, companionship, and parental guidance. The Killino Firm’s maternal death lawyer resource provides a broader overview of these claims and potential damages.
What does a breach of the standard of care look like?
The standard of care depends on the mother’s condition and the circumstances surrounding her care at the time. As a result, whether a breach occurred must be evaluated based on the specific facts of the case rather than the outcome alone.
For example, a case involving severe postpartum bleeding may examine whether the medical team recognized excessive blood loss, called for help promptly, administered appropriate treatment, and arranged surgery or blood products when the circumstances required them.
Similarly, a preeclampsia case may focus on blood pressure readings, laboratory results, reported symptoms, medication decisions, and whether providers discharged a patient despite signs that she remained unstable.
Other maternal death claims may involve delayed recognition of sepsis, pulmonary embolism, anesthesia complications, cardiac conditions, medication errors, or failure to respond when a postpartum patient’s condition deteriorated.
Ultimately, the occurrence of one of these complications does not, by itself, establish a breach of the standard of care. Attorneys and medical experts must examine whether the providers responded as reasonably competent providers would have under the same circumstances and whether any departure from the applicable standard of care caused the mother’s death.
Why are medical records so important?
Medical records can provide a detailed account of a patient’s care, often revealing what happened before the family received an explanation of the mother’s death. These records can help attorneys reconstruct the sequence of events and identify when important decisions were made.
Depending on the circumstances, attorneys may obtain prenatal records, admission notes, nursing documentation, vital signs, medication logs, laboratory results, imaging, anesthesia records, operative reports, discharge records, postpartum visits, and pathology or autopsy findings. Taken together, these records can provide a more complete picture of the mother’s condition and the care she received.
Timing can be especially important. Suppose a patient’s blood pressure remained dangerously elevated for several hours. The records may reveal when staff first documented the problem, when a physician received the information, what treatment was ordered, and how much time passed before the patient’s condition worsened.
Electronic health records may also show who entered an order, when a clinician accessed a test result, and how staff documented changes in the patient’s condition.
What role do medical experts play?
Because maternal death malpractice cases can involve complex medical issues, attorneys may rely on expert review provided by specialists. An obstetrician or maternal-fetal medicine specialist may evaluate the overall pregnancy and delivery care. Other cases may require expertise from anesthesiologists, cardiologists, infectious disease specialists, critical care physicians, radiologists, or other professionals.
At The Killino Firm, we work with specialists who help assess both the applicable standard of care and whether a deviation caused or contributed to the death. Their analysis can help translate a complicated medical record into two central questions: What should the healthcare team have done, and could appropriate care have changed the outcome?
How is causation proven?
Causation is often one of the most heavily disputed issues in a maternal death claim. Generally, the family must show that the provider’s failure to meet the applicable standard of care caused the mother’s death.
Hospitals and medical providers may argue that the mother died because of an underlying condition or an unavoidable obstetric emergency rather than negligent care. The family must therefore address those alternative explanations with medical evidence showing how the provider’s actions or omissions affected the outcome.
For example, if a mother developed a serious infection after delivery, an expert may need to determine whether earlier recognition and treatment could have prevented the infection from progressing to fatal sepsis. The same analysis may apply to hemorrhage, hypertension, blood clots, and other emergencies. The key question is what difference timely and appropriate care would likely have made.
The CDC’s maternal mortality review committees examine pregnancy-associated deaths to identify causes, contributing factors, and preventability. However, a public-health determination that a death was preventable is not the same as establishing malpractice against a particular provider. A legal claim still requires evidence that the provider failed to meet the applicable standard of care and that the failure caused the death.
Can hospital-level problems become evidence?
Yes. A maternal death investigation may involve more than the decisions of an individual doctor. In some cases, hospital-level practices or failures may provide important evidence about what contributed to the mother’s outcome.
Staffing records, hospital protocols, escalation procedures, communications, credentialing information, and other institutional evidence may help determine whether hospital-level problems contributed to a treatment delay or inadequate emergency response.
Communication between nurses and physicians can be particularly important. For instance, the records may show that nursing staff documented concerning symptoms but failed to escalate them appropriately, or that physicians failed to respond to repeated concerns.
Our blog article, “Can a family sue a hospital if a mother dies during childbirth?”, explains hospital liability in greater detail.
How does an attorney build the case?
Our maternal death attorneys may begin by reconstructing the entire clinical timeline rather than focusing on one isolated decision. This broader review can help identify when problems arose, how providers responded, and whether earlier intervention could have changed the outcome.
From there, the legal team can obtain the complete medical records, identify potential defendants, retain appropriate experts, investigate institutional failures, calculate damages, and meet state-specific requirements for filing a medical malpractice claim.
Our firm also handles broader medical malpractice wrongful death claims involving fatal medical malpractice.
Get an independent review of the medical care
Families do not need to know which doctor made a mistake or which record proves the case before contacting an attorney. An initial legal and medical review can help identify whether there are concerns that warrant further investigation.
If a mother died after severe bleeding, hypertension, infection, anesthesia complications, a blood clot, a delayed emergency C-section, or unexplained deterioration after delivery, an independent review can help determine whether the care met the applicable standard of care.
Our team investigates maternal death cases nationwide and works with medical experts to evaluate the care a mother received and whether negligent care caused her death. Visit our maternal death lawyer page or schedule a free, confidential case evaluation to discuss what happened.
Clients are not responsible for legal fees or expenses unless a financial recovery is obtained.
