Recent Cerebral Palsy and Birth Injury Verdicts: What 2024-2025 Tells Families

When a preventable mistake during labor and delivery causes a child's cerebral palsy, families face a lifetime of medical care, therapy, equipment, and lost income. Birth injury lawsuits exist to shift that financial burden back to the parties responsible, and in 2024 and 2025, juries returned some of the largest such verdicts in U.S. history.

While these results don't set a goal for each case, it's important that families understand what's at stake for their child. Also, we can learn what these cases had in common, what a verdict can and can't do for a family, and why the facts often matter as much as the dollar figure. Below we summarize several notable outcomes and the lessons families can take from them.

Notable birth injury verdicts in 2024-2025

The following verdicts were widely reported in 2024 and 2025. Figures reflect what juries (or, in one case, a judge) awarded at trial, not necessarily what families ultimately receive (more on that below).

Seven verdicts from 2024 and 2025 give a sense of range. A Utah court awarded a reported $951 million in 2025 in a case involving hypoxic-ischemic brain injury. A Detroit jury returned $120 million in 2024 for a boy with severe cerebral palsy. A St. Louis County jury awarded $48.1 million in 2025 after an obstetrician allowed labor to continue too long. A Nashville family received $47 million in 2024. A Minnesota jury awarded $29 million in 2025 after a nurse-midwife reportedly failed to contact the on-call obstetrician. An Illinois verdict of $14 million in 2024 followed a failure to diagnose and respond to a placental problem. And a Wisconsin jury awarded $10 million in 2025, in a case involving a high dose of Pitocin.

Not every case ends in a verdict. Many resolve through settlement, including an $18 million birth injury settlement reached with a Chicago-area hospital in 2025 after a three-week trial.

What these cases had in common

Read together, these cases point to a familiar set of preventable failures during labor and delivery, the same kinds of events that can deprive a baby's brain of oxygen and lead to cerebral palsy:

The same four failures recur across almost all of them. Failure to recognize or act on fetal distress shown on the heart-rate monitor. A cesarean delayed when a faster delivery was needed. Misuse of labor-induction drugs such as Pitocin, producing contractions that are too strong or too frequent. And a failure to escalate, meaning a midwife or nurse who did not call the supervising physician in time.

These mechanisms are closely tied to hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE), one of the leading preventable causes of cerebral palsy. When the standard of care is not met and a lasting injury results, those failures can form the basis of a birth injury lawsuit.

Why birth injury awards are so large

To families unfamiliar with these cases, the numbers can seem staggering. But a severe birth injury creates costs that stretch across an entire lifetime, and courts award damages to cover them. Those damages typically fall into several categories:

What the money is meant to cover explains why the numbers are large. Future medical care, meaning surgeries, medication, hospitalizations and specialist visits across 50, 60 or more years. Therapy and equipment, including wheelchairs, communication devices and orthotics that have to be replaced repeatedly as a child grows. Home and vehicle modification. Lost earning capacity, both the child’s and the wages a parent gives up to provide care. And pain, suffering and loss of a normal life, which several states cap by statute.

Economists and life-care planners routinely testify to these figures at trial. When decades of round-the-clock care are added up, the lifetime cost of severe cerebral palsy can reach several million dollars, which is why verdicts in clearly proven cases climb into the tens or even hundreds of millions.

What a verdict really means (and what it doesn't)

A large headline number is not the same as a check in a family's account. A few important realities:

Three caveats matter more than any individual figure. Verdicts are often reduced, because many states cap certain damages and defendants routinely file post-trial motions or appeals that cut the final number, sometimes by a great deal. Most cases settle quietly, so the majority of birth injury claims resolve in confidential agreements whose amounts are never published, which means the reported verdicts are a visible minority rather than a representative sample. And every case is different: a verdict reflects one jury, one set of facts and one state’s law. It is not a price tag for any other child.

What these outcomes do show is that when negligence is proven, the law recognizes the enormous lifetime cost of raising a child with a serious birth injury, and that those costs can be shifted to the responsible party.

If you are considering a claim

Two things matter most early on. First, the statute of limitations (the legal deadline to file) varies by state and can be shorter than families expect, though many states give extra time for injuries to a child. Second, these cases turn on detailed medical records and expert review, so an experienced birth injury attorney will want to evaluate the facts as early as possible. Our guides on cerebral palsy legal help, birth injury lawsuits, and settlements explain how the process works.

Sources

• Childbirth Injuries, reporting on the Utah and Missouri verdicts. childbirthinjuries.com
• The Expert Institute. The Biggest Medical Malpractice Verdicts of 2025. expertinstitute.com
• Snyder & Wenner, $120 million Michigan birth injury verdict. snyderwenner.com
• Levin & Perconti, $18M birth injury settlement. levinperconti.com

Disclaimer. This article is general legal information, not legal advice, and does not create an attorney-client relationship. Verdict amounts are based on news accounts and may be reduced on appeal or by statutory caps. Past results do not guarantee future outcomes; every case is decided on its own facts. If you believe your child's cerebral palsy may have been caused by a medical error, contact us for a free, confidential review.