How do I know if my child's injury was caused by medical negligence?

This is rarely a question families can answer on their own, and it should not have to be. The distinction between a preventable injury and an unavoidable complication is a medical and legal determination that requires careful review of the full record of care by professionals qualified to evaluate it. What matters is not simply that something went wrong, but whether the provider's decisions and actions measured up to what the circumstances required of them. Many families who contact Harden Crichton, P.C. are not certain whether they have a viable claim. The free initial consultation exists precisely to give you an informed, honest answer based on the actual facts of your situation rather than assumptions about what may or may not be possible.

How long do I have to file a birth injury claim in Pennsylvania?

How long you have to take action in a birth injury case depends on whose claim is being filed, and the difference matters significantly. For the child's claim, Pennsylvania's minor tolling statute pauses the statute of limitations until the child turns 18, giving them until their 20th birthday to file. For parents' own claims, however, the standard two-year statute of limitations applies and is not tolled. If you are interested in seeking compensation for losses you personally sustained, such as medical expenses you paid on your child's behalf, lost wages, emotional distress, or loss of your child's companionship, you generally have two years from the date of the injury or from the date you discovered or reasonably should have discovered that negligence caused the harm. Waiting on the assumption that you have until your child turns 20 could affect your own right to compensation, if applicable under the facts and law. Speaking with a birth injury attorney as early as possible protects both your claim and your child's.

What medical records and documentation should I gather?

Preserving a complete record of your child's care is one of the most important things you can do in the early stages of a potential birth injury claim. Relevant documents include prenatal care records, labor and delivery records, fetal monitoring strips, nursing notes, operative reports if a cesarean section was performed, newborn evaluation records, and any records of NICU admission or treatment. You have a legal right to request copies of your and your child's medical records from every provider involved in the care. An attorney can assist in obtaining a complete set of records and identifying any gaps or inconsistencies that warrant further investigation.

Will pursuing a birth injury claim hurt the hospital or doctor financially?

This concern is understandable, but in most cases, the compensation paid in a birth injury claim comes from the healthcare provider's or hospital's professional liability insurance, not from their personal finances. Hospitals and physician groups carry substantial malpractice insurance for exactly this purpose. Pursuing a claim is not an act of personal financial aggression against a provider. It is a legitimate use of the legal system to hold accountable parties who failed in their professional obligations and to secure the resources your child needs going forward. Many families also find that pursuing accountability serves a broader purpose, prompting institutions to examine and improve the practices that led to the injury.

What if my child's injury was not immediately diagnosed after birth?

It is not uncommon for the full extent of a birth injury, or its connection to events during labor and delivery, to become clear only over time. Some neurological conditions, including certain presentations of cerebral palsy, may not be fully apparent until developmental milestones are missed in the months or years following birth. Pennsylvania's discovery rule, which allows the statute of limitations clock to begin running from the point when the injury and its likely cause were known or reasonably should have been known, may be relevant in these situations. The tolling provisions that apply to minor plaintiffs also provide additional time in many cases. An attorney can assess how these rules apply to your specific circumstances.

Philadelphia Birth Injury Lawyer | Birth Trauma Attorney in Philadelphia, PA

Harden Crichton/

Philadelphia Birth Injury Lawyer

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A Birth Trauma Attorney in Philadelphia, PA, Who Stands With Families When Their Care Providers Fall Short

The birth of a child should be one of the most joyful moments of a family's life. When a preventable medical error during pregnancy, labor, or delivery causes serious harm to a newborn or mother, that joy gives way to fear, grief, and a cascade of challenges that no family should have to face alone. If your child has been injured because a healthcare provider failed to meet the standard of care, you deserve answers, accountability, and the legal support to secure your child's future. A Philadelphia birth injury lawyer at Harden Crichton, P.C. is here to provide all three.

Harden Crichton, P.C. understands that the families who come to them in the aftermath of a birth injury are not simply looking for legal representation. They are parents and caregivers who are exhausted, heartbroken, and trying to find a path forward for a child they love. Attorneys Kevin Harden, Jr. and Troy Crichton approach every birth injury case with the genuine compassion and personal investment that these families deserve, alongside the legal skill and disciplined preparation that the most complex and high-stakes medical malpractice cases demand. As your birth trauma attorney in Philadelphia, PA, Harden Crichton, P.C. will fight for accountability and for resources to support your child’s long-term needs.

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Your Rights When a Birth Injury Is the Result of Medical Negligence

Not every difficult birth outcome is the result of negligence. Childbirth is a complex medical event, and some complications cannot be prevented even with the highest quality of care. But a significant number of birth injuries are preventable. These are birth injuries caused not by unavoidable circumstances but instead by failures in the medical care your family had every right to expect and receive.

A birth injury claim arises when a healthcare provider's deviation from the accepted standard of care during pregnancy, labor, or delivery directly causes harm to a newborn or mother. That deviation may take many forms, such as:

A failure to monitor fetal heart rate patterns that indicated distress
A delay in ordering a necessary cesarean section (C-section), or a surgical birth
The improper use of delivery instruments
Inadequate response to a maternal complication
A medication error that affected the mother or the child

In each case, the core question is the same: did the provider do what a reasonably competent professional in that specialty would have done under the same circumstances?

Birth injuries often involve systemic failures as well as individual ones. Some of the institutional conditions that create the environment for preventable harm include:

Understaffed labor and delivery units
Inadequate supervision of less experienced providers
Poor communication between members of a care team
Insufficient training in emergency obstetric procedures

A Philadelphia birth injury lawyer at Harden Crichton, P.C. investigates both the individual conduct and the broader circumstances that contributed to your child's injury. Identifying every responsible party is essential to pursuing a recovery that addresses your family’s losses as fully as possible.

Common Types of Birth Injuries Harden Crichton, P.C. Handles

Birth injuries vary widely in their cause, severity, and long-term implications. Some affect newborns directly; others affect mothers. In either case, the consequences can ripple through the whole family.

Some of the most commonly seen types of birth injuries that give rise to injury claims include:

Hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE): HIE occurs when a baby's brain is deprived of adequate oxygen and blood flow during or around the time of birth, often as a result of delayed intervention in a distressed delivery. It is a leading cause of cerebral palsy and other serious, permanent neurological conditions.
Cerebral palsy: Often caused or contributed to by oxygen deprivation during delivery, cerebral palsy affects movement, muscle tone, and motor development. Its impact ranges from mild limitations to profound lifelong disability requiring full-time care.
Brachial plexus injuries: Damage to the network of nerves controlling the arm and hand, most commonly caused by excessive traction during delivery, can result in weakness, limited range of motion, or permanent paralysis in the affected limb.
Skull fractures and intracranial hemorrhage: Improper use of forceps or vacuum extraction devices can cause physical trauma to a newborn's skull and brain, with consequences that may include developmental delays, seizures, and cognitive impairment.
Bone fractures: The clavicle and other bones can be fractured during delivery, particularly in difficult or prolonged labors, when improper technique is used to manage the delivery of a large baby.
Blue baby syndrome: Cyanosis, or oxygen deprivation that causes a bluish discoloration of the skin, can result from a range of delivery-related complications and, when caused by medical negligence, may indicate serious underlying harm to the brain or heart.
Maternal injury: Mothers, too, can suffer serious and lasting harm as a result of negligent obstetric care, including uterine rupture, severe hemorrhage, and injuries that affect their long-term health and quality of life.

If your child or a loved one experienced harm during labor or delivery that you believe may have been preventable, speaking with a birth trauma attorney in Philadelphia, PA, can help you determine whether you may have a claim. Harden Crichton, P.C. handles these and other types of birth injury cases for Philadelphia-area families, seeking answers, accountability, and financial recoveries.

Identifying Defendants: Who You Could Potentially Hold Responsible for a Birth Injury

Birth injuries frequently involve more than one party whose conduct contributed to the harm. Identifying every potentially liable defendant is a critical part of building a comprehensive claim. Determining all parties that may be held accountable requires careful investigation of the full record of care.

Depending on the circumstances, responsible parties may include:

Obstetricians and delivering physicians: The physician managing labor and delivery bears direct responsibility for the clinical decisions made in the delivery room, including when to intervene, what instruments or techniques to use, and how to respond to signs of fetal or maternal distress.
Nurses and labor and delivery staff: Labor and delivery nurses are often the first to recognize warning signs in fetal monitoring data or maternal condition. Failures in monitoring, escalation, or communication can constitute negligence independent of the physician's conduct.
Midwives: Certified nurse-midwives and other midwifery providers are held to their own professional standard of care. Deviations from that standard can give rise to individual liability.
Anesthesiologists: Errors in the administration or management of epidural or general anesthesia during labor and delivery can cause serious harm to mother and child.
Hospitals and health systems: Hospitals bear institutional responsibility for adequate staffing of labor and delivery units, appropriate supervision of residents and less experienced providers, functioning equipment, and clear protocols for obstetric emergencies. Institutional failures can create the conditions for a preventable injury.
Perinatologists and other specialists: Maternal-fetal medicine specialists and other consultants who provide care during high-risk pregnancies carry their own standard of care obligations, and failures in that care can contribute to birth injuries.

A Philadelphia birth injury lawyer at Harden Crichton, P.C. will investigate the records, identify every party whose conduct fell below the standard of care, and pursue accountability from each of them on your family's behalf.

What a Birth Injury Claim Can Mean for Your Child's Future

For a child whose life has been affected by a preventable injury and their family, it’s not legal strategy or procedural steps that matter most. It’s the impact that a successful claim for compensation, one that fully reflects the long-term consequences of the birth injury, can have on the child’s future.

The team at Harden Crichton, P.C. recognizes that, for many families, compensation in a birth injury case is the foundation on which a child's entire future is built.

Access to Therapies and Interventions That Change Outcomes

Many children who sustain birth injuries benefit significantly from early and sustained therapeutic intervention. Several types of interventions can meaningfully improve function and quality of life, particularly when they are started early and maintained consistently. These interventions may include:

Physical therapy
Occupational therapy
Speech and language therapy
Behavioral and cognitive therapies

These services are expensive, and they are often not fully covered by insurance. Without the resources you could receive through a claim, many children who could benefit from more extensive interventions would instead have to settle for a reduced treatment plan dictated by what the family can afford to pay out of pocket. But a birth injury recovery can help fund the care your child needs over time.

Specialized Medical Care and Equipment

Children with serious birth injuries often require ongoing care from physicians, neurologists, orthopedic specialists, and other providers. To live the fullest life possible, they may need assistive equipment, such as wheelchairs, communication devices, orthotics, or adaptive technology.

As they grow, their needs change, and their care must change with them. A comprehensive recovery seeks to account for these costs across your child's entire lifetime, not just the early years.

Educational Support

Birth injuries that affect cognition, communication, or motor development can significantly affect a child's educational experience and the level of support they require. Specialized schooling, learning support services, assistive technology, and individualized education planning all carry real costs that your family’s birth injury damages claim can address.

Housing and Daily Living Support

When a birth injury results in significant permanent disability, a child may require a modified living environment, ongoing personal care assistance, and support with daily activities that their peers can manage independently. These are long-term financial realities that a birth injury claim should be built to address, and they require careful, expert-supported projection of lifetime costs.

Long-Term Financial Security

A birth injury can affect a person's ability to pursue education and employment throughout their life, limiting their earning capacity over decades. A birth injury recovery can be structured to account for the economic impact of those limitations, helping provide a financial foundation to live as independently and fully as possible, even when their injury has made independent living more difficult.

The Losses That Cannot Be Measured in Dollars

Non-economic damages may also be recoverable in a birth injury case. These losses may include:

Pain
Suffering
Emotional distress
Loss of the enjoyment and opportunities your child would have had if not for this injury

These losses are real, and they matter. A birth trauma attorney in Philadelphia, PA, at Harden Crichton, P.C. will fight to see that your child’s non-economic losses are fully reflected in their claim for compensation.

Pursuing a birth injury claim is not a simple or quick process, but for many families, it is the most important step they can take for their child's future. The compensation available in these cases can be substantial, and the difference between a thorough, well-supported claim and one that falls short can have a significant impact on the resources available to support your child’s life going forward.

Why Choose a Philadelphia Birth Injury Lawyer at Harden Crichton, P.C.?

Birth injury cases require a rare combination of legal rigor, medical sophistication, and genuine human investment. The attorneys at Harden Crichton, P.C. bring all three, and they do so as a firm built specifically to serve the families who need them most.

Deeply committed to the families they serve

Attorneys Kevin Harden, Jr. and Troy Crichton built this firm because they wanted to represent real people facing real hardship. Families affected by birth injuries are exactly the types of clients they had in mind. Both attorneys are guided by deeply held personal commitments to family and community, and that foundation shapes the genuine care and investment they bring to every family they represent in these cases. To these attorneys, the most meaningful measure of their work is not the settlement figure, but the relationship with the family that continues long after the case is over.

Prepared With the Knowledge and Resources Birth Injury Cases Demand

Birth injury cases are among the most document-intensive and expert-dependent matters in civil litigation. Building a successful claim requires close collaboration with qualified obstetric and pediatric medical professionals, detailed life care planning, and expert economic analysis of lifetime costs and losses. Harden Crichton, P.C. approaches every birth injury case with the thoroughness and resources this level of preparation demands. With a track record of more than $100 million in total recoveries, the firm has demonstrated what a Philadelphia birth injury lawyer with a rigorous approach to case-building can produce in practice.

Courtroom-Ready From the Very First Step

Healthcare institutions and their insurers contest birth injury claims aggressively, knowing that the damages at stake can be significant. Harden Crichton, P.C. does not treat trial as a last resort. Both Kevin Harden, Jr. and Troy Crichton have managed dozens of jury trials and numerous bench trials throughout their careers. Drawing on that experience, they build and manage every birth injury case as though a jury will ultimately decide it. That posture can change how opposing parties respond and position families more strongly throughout the process.

Willing to Meet You Where You Are

Initial consultations are free, and the firm represents families of injured children without upfront attorney’s fees. If travel is not possible given your family's circumstances, the attorneys will come to you, whether that means your home, a hospital, or another location that works. Harden Crichton, P.C. serves families throughout Philadelphia and the surrounding region, including Delaware County, Upper Darby, Chester, Media, Brookhaven, and beyond. Both attorneys are directly accessible to the clients they represent throughout every stage of the case.

Your Family Deserves Answers, and a Birth Trauma Attorney in Philadelphia, PA, Is Ready to Help

You should not have to navigate the aftermath of a birth injury without trusted guidance from someone who understands both the medical consequences and the law, and who is genuinely invested in your child's future. Harden Crichton, P.C. is ready to listen, to evaluate your situation honestly, and to help your family understand what pursuing a claim could make possible.

Pennsylvania's statute of limitations for birth injury claims includes specific rules that differ from standard personal injury timelines, and some pre-filing requirements may apply. The sooner you speak with an attorney, the better protected your family's options will be.

Call today or fill out the firm’s online contact form to speak with a Philadelphia birth injury lawyer at Harden Crichton, P.C. at no cost. Your child's future is worth fighting for, and this firm is prepared to do exactly that.

Frequently Asked Questions About Birth Injury Claims in Philadelphia and Throughout Pennsylvania

This is rarely a question families can answer on their own, and it should not have to be. The distinction between a preventable injury and an unavoidable complication is a medical and legal determination that requires careful review of the full record of care by professionals qualified to evaluate it.
What matters is not simply that something went wrong, but whether the provider's decisions and actions measured up to what the circumstances required of them. Many families who contact Harden Crichton, P.C. are not certain whether they have a viable claim. The free initial consultation exists precisely to give you an informed, honest answer based on the actual facts of your situation rather than assumptions about what may or may not be possible.
How long you have to take action in a birth injury case depends on whose claim is being filed, and the difference matters significantly.
For the child's claim, Pennsylvania's minor tolling statute pauses the statute of limitations until the child turns 18, giving them until their 20th birthday to file. For parents' own claims, however, the standard two-year statute of limitations applies and is not tolled.
If you are interested in seeking compensation for losses you personally sustained, such as medical expenses you paid on your child's behalf, lost wages, emotional distress, or loss of your child's companionship, you generally have two years from the date of the injury or from the date you discovered or reasonably should have discovered that negligence caused the harm. Waiting on the assumption that you have until your child turns 20 could affect your own right to compensation, if applicable under the facts and law.
Speaking with a birth injury attorney as early as possible protects both your claim and your child's.
Preserving a complete record of your child's care is one of the most important things you can do in the early stages of a potential birth injury claim. Relevant documents include prenatal care records, labor and delivery records, fetal monitoring strips, nursing notes, operative reports if a cesarean section was performed, newborn evaluation records, and any records of NICU admission or treatment.
You have a legal right to request copies of your and your child's medical records from every provider involved in the care. An attorney can assist in obtaining a complete set of records and identifying any gaps or inconsistencies that warrant further investigation.
This concern is understandable, but in most cases, the compensation paid in a birth injury claim comes from the healthcare provider's or hospital's professional liability insurance, not from their personal finances. Hospitals and physician groups carry substantial malpractice insurance for exactly this purpose.
Pursuing a claim is not an act of personal financial aggression against a provider. It is a legitimate use of the legal system to hold accountable parties who failed in their professional obligations and to secure the resources your child needs going forward. Many families also find that pursuing accountability serves a broader purpose, prompting institutions to examine and improve the practices that led to the injury.
It is not uncommon for the full extent of a birth injury, or its connection to events during labor and delivery, to become clear only over time. Some neurological conditions, including certain presentations of cerebral palsy, may not be fully apparent until developmental milestones are missed in the months or years following birth.
Pennsylvania's discovery rule, which allows the statute of limitations clock to begin running from the point when the injury and its likely cause were known or reasonably should have been known, may be relevant in these situations. The tolling provisions that apply to minor plaintiffs also provide additional time in many cases. An attorney can assess how these rules apply to your specific circumstances.