A man and a woman have settled their lawsuit against the UC Regents in which they alleged an obstetrician’s delay in performing a C-section led to the death of the couple’s baby girl less than a week after her 2021 birth at Ronald Reagan-UCLA Medical Center.
Plaintiffs John St. Martin and Laura St. Martin alleged medical malpractice resulting in personal injuries and wrongful death as well intentional infliction of emotional distress. John St. Martin also sued for loss of consortium.
On Tuesday, the plaintiffs’ attorneys filed court papers with Judge Mark Young stating that the case was resolved, but no terms were divulged. In their earlier court papers, UC Regents attorneys denied any liability on the part of their client and said the couple’s claims belonged in the worker’s compensation arena.
The baby, Emily Page St. Martin, was born March 10, 2021 at Ronald Reagan-UCLA Medical Center and Dr. Radhika Rible, a co-defendant in the case, provided prenatal care to Laura St. Martin, the suit stated.
The pregnancy had no complications based on all prenatal testing and imaging studies, according to the suit. The baby’s mother, then 38 and having given birth to her first child, went to all her prenatal appointments and followed her physician’s instructions, the suit stated.
Rible admitted the mother for induction of labor due to decreased fetal movement and low amniotic fluid, the suit stated. Throughout the day and night before the baby’s birth, fetal heart monitor strips began showing multiple episodes of prolonged variability and late decelerations, issues not noted by any of the team of doctors even though the findings were indicative of hypoxia and acidosis, the suit alleged.
The St. Martins maintain the standard of care for doctors practicing in labor and delivery required that an emergency C-section be performed no later than the afternoon of March 9, 2021, which they say would have resulted in the delivery of a healthy baby.
Instead, Rible breached the standard of care by “recklessly and despicably” attempting a vacuum-assisted delivery, causing the baby’s head to become lodged in her mother’s pelvis and causing injuries to the mother and her unborn child, the suit alleged.
Although Rible later did perform a C-section, her “reckless and oppressive unreasonable delay in delivery,” compounded by her initial attempt to deliver the baby by vacuum-assisted vaginal delivery, caused the child to suffer a catastrophic hypoxic brain injury and die six days later on March 16, 2021, the suit stated.
If the baby had been delivered by C-section on or before March 9, 2021, or even early on the day of her birth, she would likely have survived, the suit stated.