Herzliya Court Orders Hospital to Pay 1 Million Shekels in Stillbirth Negligence Case
A Herzliya court ordered Mayanei HaYeshua Medical Center to pay one million shekels over a preventable stillbirth caused by fetal monitoring negligence and unauthorized burial.
The Magistrate's Court in Herzliya has ordered the Mayanei HaYeshua Medical Center to pay approximately one million shekels to a couple whose baby was stillborn due to medical negligence. Judge Ido Rozin ruled that the medical staff failed to properly monitor the fetal heart rate, leading to a preventable tragedy, and violated the parents' right to mourn by burying the infant in an unknown location without their presence.
The tragic incident occurred in December 2021. The mother, who was in the 40th week of her third and uncomplicated pregnancy, arrived at the hospital following rupture of membranes and was admitted to the high-risk pregnancy ward for observation and waiting for labor to progress. In the afternoon, the mother was connected to a fetal monitor, which indicated repeated and significant decelerations in the fetal heart rate. Despite this, after about an hour and a quarter, she was disconnected from the device without a doctor's approval. Later, she complained of a viscous discharge and a feeling of a stuck mucous plug, but was not examined.
About an hour later, she approached the nurses again, reporting that she felt a loop-like sensation and suspected it might be the umbilical cord. An examination revealed the magnitude of the disaster: the umbilical cord had prolapsed, and the fetus, found with no heartbeat, had suffocated to death inside her mother's womb due to interrupted blood and oxygen supply. The mother subsequently underwent a stillbirth delivery.
In their lawsuit, the parents alleged severe medical negligence that led to their daughter's death. They also stated that the baby was buried in a mass burial for stillborns at a location unknown to them, despite their written request to attend the burial procedure. In response, the hospital argued that it was a rare and unpredictable umbilical cord accident that could not have been prevented, claiming the monitoring was normal and the complaints did not warrant an examination. Regarding the burial, the hospital blamed ZAKA.
Judge Rozin upheld the lawsuit, adopting the court-appointed expert's opinion. He ruled that halting the monitoring despite the decelerations without physician approval, as well as failing to examine the mother upon her complaints, constituted severe omissions. He stated that had proper actions been taken, the cord prolapse could have been diagnosed and the infant saved. The judge also held the hospital's failure to testify the involved staff members against it, noting that the medical staff's silence echoed loudly in the courtroom. Furthermore, the hospital's claim that the mother asked to delay delivery until after Shabbat was rejected, notably because the associated risks were not explained to her. Regarding the burial, the court ruled that the hospital bore the responsibility for coordinating with the family, noting a severe violation of their rights.
Ultimately, the mother was awarded half a million shekels and the father a quarter of a million shekels for pain and suffering, along with 60,000 shekels each for the violation of human dignity regarding the burial. In addition, 4,000 shekels were awarded for medical and travel expenses, alongside the reimbursement of court fees, expert expenses of approximately 19,000 shekels, and legal fees of about 206,000 shekels.
