South Carolina Lawyers Weekly Magazine reports that Yarborough Applegate recently negotiated a $2.2 million settlement for a young woman whose baby was born with brain damage and later died. The doctor at the center of the case lied during her deposition, claiming she waited to deliver the baby by C-section because the 19-year-old mother withdrew her consent to have the operation.
“She lied,” lead attorney David Yarborough said. “I never expected her to say that. It was nowhere in the records. I’m taking her deposition and all of a sudden that’s her explanation.”
The lawsuit alleged that the doctor and other medical providers involved in the birth waited too long to deliver the baby, all while his brain was being deprived of blood and oxygen. He died in January 2014, at 18 months of age.
The doctor and her lawyers initially contended that she did nothing wrong. However, the doctor’s insurer paid $1.2 million and the hospital’s insurer paid an additional $1 million to settle the suit on May 8.
Due to a confidentiality agreement, Yarborough declined to provide any identifying information about the defendants or his client. He mediated the case with his law partners, William Applegate and Douglas Jennings. Douglas Jennings Jr. and Mason King of the Jennings Law Firm in Bennettsville also represented the mother.
Yarborough added that the nurses, the mother, and family members who were in the delivery room said the mother had not withdrawn her consent to have a C-section. Her medical records also did not indicate that she declined the procedure.
Despite her deposition testimony, the doctor said nothing about the mother withdrawing her consent when she had a meeting with colleagues to discuss what went wrong during the delivery, according to Yarborough.
Although the meeting was confidential, preventing Yarborough from asking questions about it, he knew the baby’s pediatrician had been in the room. So, he asked the pediatrician if he had heard anyone say the mother refused the C-section prior to the doctor’s deposition. He had not.
Disclaimer: The settlements and verdicts shown here should not be considered as a description or characterization of the quality of the firm’s representation and in no way should be interpreted as a guarantee of a specific result or outcome of any particular case. As such, the reader should not rely on the cases below to develop any expectation regarding the value of his or her case.