Successfully defending an OB-GYN against a multimillion-dollar medical malpractice claim

Our Client's Challenge

When an Alabama obstetrician-gynecologist was facing an eight-figure damages claim in a medical malpractice suit, the physician turned to the Lightfoot team. The lawsuit alleged that our client fell below the standard of care in managing the plaintiff’s labor and delivery process, resulting in a pre-birth brain injury to her son, who would require tens of millions of dollars of care over his lifetime.

Our Approach

The Lightfoot team aggressively defended the case and presented expert testimony, medical literature and factual evidence establishing that our doctor provided reasonable and appropriate care to the plaintiff and her son at all times. In doing so, we retained a top-tier local obstetrician-gynecologist whose medical experience closely mirrored our client’s and who had deep-rooted convictions about the appropriateness of our doctor’s care.

We also established that the plaintiff’s expert had grossly inflated the projected cost of caring for plaintiff’s son. We retained a specialist in the area of healthcare cost and delivery analysis. This expert drafted a report showing the availability of public and private resources to fund all or part of the child’s healthcare costs and at a fraction of the price projected by the plaintiff’s expert.

Facing this credible and well-credentialed expert who stood ready to tell the jury the truth about the real-world cost of the medical care in question, the plaintiff dismissed all of her claims for economic damages.

The Result

After hearing the evidence, the jury returned a verdict for Lightfoot’s client after about two hours of deliberations.