Attorney Advertising - Personal Injury
Personal Injury Lawfirms and Negative Advertising
“Putting Their Knowledge and Expertise to Work”
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For many years, some personal injury attorneys’ websites have advertised for business in varying forms of media, attempting to alert and attract those clients who may have suffered injuries at the hands of medical professionals. Midwives have always been a popular target since the profession is frequently maligned and misunderstood. What better profession to target when mining for potential economic windfalls?
Trial lawyers may take, at least, forty percent of any monetary award if they can prove that negligent midwifery care caused a baby to suffer permanent brain injury, lifelong disability, or other serious losses associated with errors committed during pregnancy, childbirth, or postpartum.
Georgio Travato
A typical trial attorney might decline to advertise for injuries suffered in the postpartum period, as injuries in this time frame generally affect the mother, only, and critical maternal events will most often result in death rather than life-long disability. From a practical (if cynical) viewpoint, maternal injury/death is not necessarily where the money is. A wrongful death award is trivial compared with the lifelong costs required to support a permanently brain injured child or adult.
Many personal injury advertisements are illustrated with pictures of unfortunate-looking newborn babies and “mothers” (actresses) with staged facial expressions of pain, disbelief and despair.
The text may begin with a description of the author’s comprehension of what midwives are “trained” (like seals?) to do, their questionable competence, and where they practice (mostly at home).
There may be a good-news statement about choosing midwifery, such as “most births are healthy and complication-free”. But the context of this message implies that, with most normal births, even your CAT can deliver a baby. These advertisements will usually conclude by listing the ways that midwives may be found liable in birth-injury cases. (see below).
Binx
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These Lawyers Are Not Your Friends
The critical need for physician oversight and intercession is, predictably, part of the advertising picture because midwives may “wait too long” to summon help in complicated births. Catastrophic results will occur with midwifery care if a physician is not nearby, directly supervising the birth, or summoned in a timely fashion.
Finally, on the heels of this rubbish, the reader is introduced to the remarkable capabilities and experience of the law firm and its attorneys.
The Very Worst
Attorney advertisements may also advance curious claims like, “lawyers in the firm only take “righteous cases”, whatever that is intended to mean. Other ads promise “millions of dollars” in compensation if the midwife botches a delivery. Not surprisingly, with so many of these advertising enticements, midwives are featured as “unprofessional”, possessing only remedial training and offering only “services” to childbearing mothers.
Midwives provide excellent service and assistance.
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Once again, the “duty” of a midwife is to provide mothers, and doctors, with ongoing “service” and “assistance” during gestation, labor, childbirth, and after delivery. There is, rarely, any suggestion that midwives can provide independent, professional care on their own. The only advantage to using a nurse-midwife is the profession’s discount pricing, available as a result of “less routine” and “low tech” care. A literal bargain basement of maternity care!
Lists of Shame
The worst advertisements will list “mistakes” that midwives make which cause birth injury:*
1. Failure to monitor the baby.
2. Failure to recognize fetal distress (2 ways of describing one failure).
3. Failure to perform “aversion”. For maternal care professionals, it’s clear what is, inaccurately, being referred to. Publishing this item without edits or proofing reveals the robust degree of ignorance involved. (CNMs/CMs may assist in an attempted “version”, but independently performing this manipulation to rotate the baby from breech to vertex presentation is not, typically, considered to be within CNM/CM scope of practice).
4. Failure to diagnose and treat preeclampsia.
5. Failure to treat toxemia. ( again, two items describing the same thing)
6. Ruptured uterus. (so . . . where is the failure which can result in uterine rupture?)
7. Failure to monitor a VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean section). Okay, there it is.
8. Inability to manage pitocin/oxytocin infusions. (“Inability” and not “failure”, suggesting disability; that midwives are not capable of managing these drugs.)
*The frequently used tactic for these lists-of-shame is to stretch the itemization of midwifery failures by listing one item of negligence in two or more different ways.
According to one knowledgeable attorney website, a CNM is “an advanced practice registered nurse (APRN)”, which is right. “After completing their master’s degree, CNM candidates must pass the Women’s Health Care Nurse Practitioner examination by the American Midwifery Certification Board.” Totally wrong. The lawyer-author of this ad was confusing women’s healthcare nurse-practitioners with certified nurse-midwives, supporting the point that so many medical negligence attorneys (plaintiff and defense), have no idea what a CNM or CM does, much less their educational background and practice. *
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Seeking the Desperate Through Advertising
After reading these ads for many years, I can say with confidence that many of them contain varying amounts of ignorance, carelessness, and misinformation. This form of attorney advertising is disseminated to entice legal business from the injured public. Quite often, it appears less about truth and good intentions than generating income from a family’s misfortune.
Of course, malpractice does exist; by midwives, doctors, nurses, lawyers and other professionals. While some lawsuits are warranted, others are not. Litigation requires the participation of competent and ethical defense (insurance) lawyers and plaintiffs’ (trial) lawyers. Each has the responsibility to represent and navigate their clients through the legal system, with the intent to achieve favorable outcomes. Both types of lawyers have been educated to diligently advocate for, protect, and positively affect the lives and interests of their clients. Unfortunately, resorting to reckless and inaccurate advertising is undignified, self-serving, and diminishes the professionals who publish it.
* For additional example of trial attorney advertising see: Can You Sue a Midwife For Medical Malpractice? https://www.gilmanbedigian.com/can-you-sue-a-midwife-for-medical-malpractice/
http://www.midwivesontrial.com