27-year-old Lucas Hollingsworth is quadriplegic and cannot speak or move after staff at a Washington State community hospital committed a series of medical errors during his birth. The baby’s heart rate was not monitored for two hours before delivery, the attending physician failed to call a specialist when the baby’s head became stuck in the birth canal, the doctor used forceps, which he was not qualified to handle, the nurse-anesthetist and doctor never put an oxygen tube in the child’s lungs when he failed to breathe on his own, and the doctor waited four days before transporting him to a hospital with a critical care unit for newborns. Lucas’s family filed a lawsuit against the doctor and the hospital; the doctor settled the case before trial. A jury awarded the Hollingsworths over $5 million.
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