Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice has ruled that Guelph General Hospital did owe a duty of care to an unborn child whose family claims that negligence during the baby’s delivery led to brain damage.
In a decision released Wednesday, Justice Wolfram Tausendfreund rejected an argument from Guelph General Hospital, three obstetricians and four obstetrical nurses that they had no such obligation in the case of Kevin Liebig, who was born eight years ago with hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy, or brain damage cause by oxygen deprivation.
“The duty to both mother and fetus in the maternal-fetal care scenario has long been established in Canadian jurisprudence,” he wrote.
I wonder if this will be appealed to the Supreme Court.
It's interesting that in Canadian Law, for the purposes of abortion, mother and fetus are one. But for delivery, they are not.
