Kernan

BACKGROUND

Factual Background On November 4, 2016, plaintiff was 39 weeks pregnant when she went to the hospital for an External Cephalic Version (ECV), a procedure to rotate her healthy fetus from a breech position to a head-first position. Doctors recorded the ECV as successful and monitored the fetal heartbeat for 40 minutes following the procedure. There was no indication of any problem and the post-procedure fetal monitoring was considered “reassuring.” Later that night, following her discharge from the hospital, plaintiff could not detect any fetal movement. The next day, November 5, 2016, plaintiff returned to the hospital because she continued not to detect any fetal movement. Upon performing an ultrasound, doctors informed plaintiff that there was no fetal heartbeat and that she had suffered an intrauterine fetal demise (IUFD). The doctors told plaintiff and noted in the medical records that they could not determine the etiology of the fetal death. They also noted in plaintiff’s records that nothing in the literature indicated an association between ECV procedures and fetal demise.

2 The doctors induced labor on November 5, 2016, and after 30 hours of labor, plaintiff…