Finding out that you or someone you love suffered preventable harm during pregnancy is devastating. When a healthcare provider misses or ignores the warning signs of preeclampsia or eclampsia, the consequences can be life-altering. These conditions are serious, and they require immediate medical attention. When doctors fail to provide that care, families are left wondering whether they have legal recourse.
The answer depends on whether you can prove medical malpractice. That means showing that your doctor had a duty to care for you, that they didn't follow accepted medical standards in diagnosing or treating your condition, and that this failure directly caused harm to you or your baby. In New York, these cases rely heavily on expert medical testimony and detailed evidence about what should have happened during your prenatal care and delivery.
Understanding preeclampsia and eclampsia, what proper care looks like, and how the law treats failures in that care can help you figure out whether you have a case.
What Are Preeclampsia and Eclampsia?
Preeclampsia is a dangerous blood pressure condition that develops after 20 weeks of pregnancy. It doesn't just mean high blood pressure. It involves signs that your organs are being damaged, particularly your liver and kidneys. The CDC describes it as one of the most serious complications of pregnancy, affecting somewhere between 2% and 8% of pregnancies worldwide.
Before preeclampsia develops, a woman typically has normal blood pressure. Then, suddenly, her blood pressure rises and stays elevated. She might experience severe headaches, vision changes like blurriness or seeing spots, pain in her upper right abdomen, shortness of breath, or swelling in her hands and face. These symptoms matter because they signal that something is going very wrong.
Eclampsia takes preeclampsia to another level. It happens when a woman with preeclampsia begins having seizures that can't be explained by another neurological condition. These seizures are dangerous and can be fatal. They put both mother and baby at immediate risk.
Both conditions are leading causes of maternal death and severe complications during pregnancy. They can cause strokes, heart failure, kidney failure, a condition called HELLP syndrome that affects the liver and blood, and long-term cardiovascular problems. For babies, these conditions increase the risk of growth restriction, placental abruption, stillbirth, and complications after birth.
The medical community has known about these risks for decades. That's why proper prenatal care includes routine blood pressure checks and specific protocols for managing high blood pressure during pregnancy.
How Should Doctors Diagnose and Treat Preeclampsia?
Medical guidelines from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists spell out exactly how doctors should handle hypertensive disorders during pregnancy. These aren't just suggestions. They're widely used benchmarks that every obstetrician, family doctor, or midwife delivering babies should follow.
The basics start with screening. Every pregnant woman should have her blood pressure checked at every prenatal visit. Doctors should also ask about symptoms and order urine tests or blood work when there are concerns. If a woman has risk factors for preeclampsia, like a history of high blood pressure, kidney disease, diabetes, or previous preeclampsia in an earlier pregnancy, her doctor should be watching even more closely.
When preeclampsia is diagnosed, the level of care depends on severity. For women with preeclampsia without severe features, management includes frequent monitoring. That means regular ultrasounds to check the baby's growth, tests to make sure the baby is doing well, blood pressure checks at least twice a week, and weekly lab work to watch for signs that the condition is worsening. The goal is to get to at least 37 weeks of pregnancy before delivering, if it's safe to wait that long.
When preeclampsia has severe features, or when eclampsia develops, the approach changes dramatically. Blood pressure that reaches dangerous levels needs to be brought down immediately with medication. Magnesium sulfate should be given to prevent or stop seizures. And delivery needs to happen quickly once the mother is stabilized. The exact timing depends on how far along the pregnancy is and how severe the situation has become, but the priority shifts to getting the baby delivered safely before something catastrophic happens to the mother.
These aren't arbitrary rules. They're based on decades of research showing that hypertensive disorders are one of the top causes of pregnancy-related deaths in the United States. Following these guidelines saves lives.
Can You Sue for Missed Preeclampsia or Eclampsia?
Yes, but only if you can prove that your doctor's failure to diagnose or treat your condition was medical malpractice. That's a specific legal standard, and it requires more than just showing that something went wrong.
Medical malpractice is a type of negligence claim. It has four parts, and you need to prove all of them:
First, there has to be a doctor-patient relationship. That's usually straightforward if you were receiving prenatal care or delivered your baby at a hospital where the doctor was responsible for your care.
Second, you have to show that the doctor deviated from accepted medical practice. In preeclampsia cases, this means proving that they didn't do something that a competent obstetrician or other provider would have done in the same situation. Maybe they didn't check your blood pressure often enough, or they ignored your complaints of severe headaches and vision problems. Maybe they saw elevated blood pressure readings but didn't order the follow-up tests or monitoring that guidelines require. Maybe they failed to give you magnesium sulfate when you started having seizures, or they delayed delivery when the situation had become critical.
Expert witnesses play a huge role in these cases. Because the law recognizes that medical decisions are complex, courts rely on other doctors to explain what should have happened. These experts review your medical records, compare what your providers did to what the guidelines say, and testify about how a reasonably careful doctor would have handled your care.
Third, you have to prove causation. This is often the hardest part. It's not enough to show that your doctor made a mistake. You have to show that the mistake caused harm. Would earlier diagnosis have prevented your stroke? Would timely delivery have saved your baby? Would proper monitoring have caught the warning signs before you developed HELLP syndrome? The evidence for this comes from medical research about how preeclampsia and eclampsia progress, combined with expert analysis of your specific case.
Finally, there needs to be damages. That means actual injuries that the law recognizes and can compensate. In preeclampsia and eclampsia cases, the injuries can be severe. Maternal injuries might include stroke, brain damage, kidney failure, liver damage, or death. Infant injuries might include brain damage from oxygen deprivation, developmental delays, cerebral palsy, or stillbirth. These are the kinds of outcomes that, when they could have been prevented by proper care, form the basis of a malpractice claim.
What Injuries Can Result From Untreated Preeclampsia?
The medical literature on preeclampsia and eclampsia is clear about the risks. These conditions don't just make pregnancy uncomfortable. They can kill.
For mothers, the danger starts with blood pressure itself. Severe hypertension during pregnancy dramatically increases the risk of stroke. Blood vessels in the brain can rupture or become blocked, causing bleeding or oxygen deprivation to brain tissue. Some women survive these strokes but are left with permanent disabilities. Others don't survive.
Beyond stroke, preeclampsia can cause multi-organ failure. The kidneys can shut down, requiring dialysis or causing permanent kidney disease. The liver can become damaged, sometimes as part of HELLP syndrome, which combines low platelets and breakdown of red blood cells with liver injury. This is a life-threatening emergency that requires immediate delivery.
Eclamptic seizures themselves are dangerous. They can cause falls and injuries. They can lead to aspiration if the mother vomits during a seizure. And they can progress to status epilepticus, a state of continuous seizing that can cause permanent brain damage or death.
The long-term effects matter too. Women who have had preeclampsia are at increased risk for cardiovascular disease later in life. They're more likely to develop chronic high blood pressure, heart disease, and stroke years or even decades after the pregnancy ends.
For babies, the risks are just as serious. Preeclampsia can restrict the baby's growth because the placenta isn't working properly. It increases the risk of placental abruption, where the placenta separates from the uterine wall before delivery, cutting off the baby's oxygen supply. It increases the risk of stillbirth. And babies born to mothers with preeclampsia are more likely to have complications like premature birth, low birth weight, and breathing problems.
When eclampsia develops and seizures aren't controlled quickly, or when delivery is delayed despite dangerous blood pressure levels, babies can suffer oxygen deprivation that leads to hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy. That's medical terminology for brain damage caused by lack of oxygen. The results can include cerebral palsy, developmental delays, seizure disorders, and profound disabilities.
These injuries are why the standard of care for preeclampsia and eclampsia is so strict. Doctors know what can happen when these conditions aren't managed properly, and that knowledge creates a duty to act.
What Does Failure to Diagnose Actually Mean?
In the context of preeclampsia and eclampsia, failure to diagnose doesn't necessarily mean that a doctor never wrote down the word "preeclampsia" in your chart. It's broader than that. It means failing to recognize the condition when the signs were there, or failing to investigate warning symptoms appropriately.
Think about a woman who calls her obstetrician complaining of a severe headache that won't go away, blurred vision, and pain under her ribs on the right side. These are classic symptoms of preeclampsia with severe features. If the doctor tells her to take Tylenol and doesn't bring her in for a blood pressure check and lab work, that's a failure to diagnose. The doctor either didn't recognize the significance of those symptoms or didn't take them seriously enough.
Or consider a woman whose blood pressure readings at prenatal visits have been creeping upward, from 120/80 to 135/85 to 145/90. If her doctor notes the elevated readings but doesn't order follow-up testing or increase the frequency of monitoring, that could be a failure to diagnose preeclampsia. The signs were there, but they weren't acted upon.
Failure to diagnose can also happen in the hospital. A woman in labor whose blood pressure spikes to 165/110 should trigger an immediate response. If nurses don't report the reading promptly, or if the doctor doesn't order medication to lower the blood pressure or consider emergent delivery, that's a failure to manage diagnosed severe preeclampsia, which is essentially the same as failing to diagnose the severity of the situation.
The question in each case is whether the provider's response matched what a competent provider would have done when faced with the same symptoms, test results, and clinical picture. That's where expert testimony becomes crucial. An expert can explain that a blood pressure of 165/110 in a pregnant woman is a medical emergency, that certain symptoms should always prompt immediate evaluation, and that specific test results require specific interventions.
What Does Failure to Treat Mean in These Cases?
Sometimes a doctor correctly diagnoses preeclampsia but then fails to treat it properly. This is just as dangerous as missing the diagnosis in the first place.
Treatment failures can take many forms. A doctor might diagnose preeclampsia but decide to manage it outpatient when the severity of the condition requires hospitalization and continuous monitoring. They might prescribe blood pressure medication but not follow up to make sure it's working. They might delay starting magnesium sulfate even when seizures have occurred or seem imminent.
One of the most common treatment failures involves timing of delivery. The guidelines are clear that women with preeclampsia without severe features should deliver at 37 weeks. Women with severe features often need to deliver earlier, and the decision depends on factors like gestational age and whether the condition is stable or worsening. When a doctor decides to keep waiting despite mounting evidence that delivery is needed, that delay can have catastrophic consequences.
Magnesium sulfate is another critical treatment decision. This medication prevents seizures in women with preeclampsia with severe features, and it stops seizures in women who have developed eclampsia. If a woman starts seizing and the medical team doesn't give magnesium sulfate, or if they give it too late, they've failed to provide standard care.
The same goes for managing dangerously high blood pressure. Blood pressure above 160/110 in pregnancy is a hypertensive emergency. It requires immediate treatment with medication to bring the pressure down and prevent stroke. If that treatment isn't given, or if it's delayed while the medical team debates what to do, that's a failure to treat.
In litigation, these treatment failures are often easier to prove than diagnostic failures because the medical records usually show that the diagnosis was made. The question becomes whether the response to that diagnosis met the standard of care. Expert witnesses can point to specific moments where guidelines called for one action and the provider chose a different, less appropriate course.
How Do You Prove That Medical Negligence Caused Your Injuries?
Causation is where many malpractice cases get complicated. You might be able to show that your doctor missed the signs of preeclampsia or delayed treatment, but you also have to show that this failure caused your injuries. If the outcome would have been the same even with perfect care, there's no malpractice case.
In preeclampsia cases, causation often comes down to timing. If you had a stroke at 36 weeks of pregnancy and your medical records show that you had severely elevated blood pressure and symptoms of preeclampsia for weeks before the stroke, but your doctor never started treatment or arranged delivery, the causal link is fairly clear. With proper care, you would have been monitored more closely, treated with medication, and delivered before the stroke occurred.
Sometimes the causation is less obvious. Preeclampsia can progress rapidly. A woman might have normal blood pressure at one visit and severe preeclampsia just days later. In those cases, the question becomes whether the provider should have recognized the early warning signs and acted sooner, or whether the condition developed so quickly that even perfect care wouldn't have prevented the injury.
This is where expert testimony and medical literature become essential. Research shows that certain signs predict rapid progression. Research shows that timely delivery prevents certain complications. Experts use this data, combined with their experience, to give opinions about what would have happened if your provider had followed the guidelines.
For infant injuries, causation can involve questions about how long the baby was deprived of oxygen and when that deprivation occurred. If a baby suffers brain damage and the medical records show that the mother had uncontrolled severe preeclampsia for hours before delivery, with concerning fetal heart rate patterns that suggested the baby was in distress, causation is easier to establish. The baby's brain injury likely resulted from the prolonged period of inadequate oxygen caused by the mother's unmanaged preeclampsia.
The evidence for causation comes from multiple sources: your medical records, testimony from the providers who cared for you, expert analysis, and published medical research about the relationship between preeclampsia, eclampsia, and specific injuries.
How Long Do You Have to File a Lawsuit in New York?
New York has strict time limits for filing medical malpractice lawsuits. The statute of limitations for these cases is generally two and a half years from the date the negligent act happened, or two and a half years from the last treatment if you received continuous treatment for the same condition.
This deadline is firm. If you wait too long and miss the statute of limitations, you lose your right to sue, no matter how strong your case might have been. There are very limited exceptions. New York law has special rules for failure to diagnose cancer and cases where a foreign object was left inside your body during surgery, but those exceptions generally don't apply to preeclampsia cases.
The timing can get complicated when both mother and baby were injured. If your baby suffered brain damage due to negligence during your pregnancy or delivery, different rules might apply to your child's claim. New York law allows for tolling of the statute of limitations for infants in certain circumstances, which can extend the time to bring a claim on behalf of a child. If your case involved care at a public hospital, additional notice requirements might apply, and those have their own deadlines that can be as short as 90 days.
Because the rules are complex and the deadlines are unforgiving, talking to a lawyer as soon as you suspect medical negligence is critical. Even if you're still recovering from your injuries or dealing with a newborn who has serious medical needs, don't wait. An experienced medical malpractice attorney can evaluate your case, gather the necessary medical records, and make sure that any claims are filed before time runs out.
What Happens If You Win a Malpractice Case?
If you can prove medical malpractice, you may be entitled to compensation for your injuries. The damages in preeclampsia and eclampsia cases can be substantial because the injuries are often severe and long-lasting.
Economic damages cover your financial losses. That includes past and future medical expenses for treatment related to the injuries caused by the malpractice. If you suffered a stroke, for example, it includes your emergency care, hospitalization, rehabilitation, ongoing therapy, and any assistive devices or home modifications you need. If your baby was injured, it includes all of the medical care your child has needed and will need in the future, which for children with severe brain injuries can amount to millions of dollars over a lifetime.
Economic damages also include lost income if you've been unable to work because of your injuries, and lost earning capacity if your injuries prevent you from working in the future. For injured children, this can include the loss of their future earning potential if their disabilities will prevent them from being able to work as adults.
Non-economic damages compensate you for things that aren't financial but are still very real losses. Pain and suffering, emotional distress, loss of enjoyment of life, and the impact of permanent disabilities all fall into this category. These damages recognize that suffering a preventable stroke or watching your child struggle with disabilities caused by medical negligence involves more than just medical bills and lost wages.
New York doesn't cap non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases the way some states do, but juries are instructed to award amounts that are fair and reasonable based on the evidence. The severity of the injuries, the degree of pain and suffering, and the impact on your quality of life all factor into these awards.
In some cases, families also recover damages for loss of consortium, which compensates a spouse for the loss of companionship, affection, and intimacy that results when their partner is severely injured.
Can You Sue Even If You Signed Consent Forms?
Many people worry that they signed away their rights when they signed consent forms at the hospital or doctor's office. That's not how consent works in the medical malpractice context.
Informed consent is a legal and ethical requirement that doctors explain the risks, benefits, and alternatives of proposed treatments or procedures so that patients can make educated decisions about their care. When you sign a consent form before delivery, you're acknowledging that you understand the risks of procedures like cesarean section or epidural anesthesia, and you're agreeing to allow those procedures.
What consent forms don't do is give your doctor permission to be negligent. They don't excuse failures to follow the standard of care. If your doctor failed to diagnose or treat preeclampsia properly, the fact that you signed a consent form for your delivery doesn't matter. You consented to the delivery and its inherent risks. You didn't consent to substandard care.
The same principle applies to general arbitration agreements or other forms you might have signed. While some medical practices have tried to include mandatory arbitration clauses in their intake paperwork, these agreements don't necessarily prevent you from pursuing a malpractice claim. They might affect where and how the claim is heard, but they don't automatically eliminate your rights if you were injured by negligence.
If you're concerned about forms you signed, discuss them with a lawyer. But don't assume that signing standard medical paperwork means you've given up your right to hold a negligent provider accountable.
What Role Do Expert Witnesses Play?
Medical malpractice cases are different from most other personal injury cases because they require expert testimony. A judge or jury can't simply look at your medical records and decide whether your doctor made a mistake. They need another doctor to explain what should have happened and why what actually happened fell short.
In a preeclampsia or eclampsia case, expert witnesses typically come from obstetrics. They might be practicing obstetricians, maternal-fetal medicine specialists, or retired OB/GYNs who focus on expert testimony and consulting. These experts review all of your medical records, including prenatal visit notes, lab results, hospital records from your delivery, and any records from emergency care you received.
The expert's job is to explain the standard of care. They might testify that when a pregnant woman reports severe headaches and visual disturbances, the standard of care requires that she be seen within hours and have her blood pressure checked immediately. They might explain that ACOG guidelines call for magnesium sulfate to be started within a specific timeframe once eclampsia is diagnosed. They might walk the jury through the progression of preeclampsia and explain how earlier intervention would have prevented your stroke.
Defense attorneys will have their own experts who will try to argue that the care you received was appropriate, or that your injuries would have occurred even with perfect care. This battle of the experts is a normal part of malpractice litigation. The jury's job is to listen to both sides and decide which experts are more credible and more convincing.
Finding the right expert can make or break a case. Your attorney will look for someone with strong credentials, experience in managing high-risk pregnancies, and the ability to explain complex medical concepts in ways that make sense to people without medical training. The expert needs to be familiar with the relevant medical literature and guidelines, and they need to be able to withstand cross-examination by the defense.
What About Reporting a Doctor's License?
Filing a malpractice lawsuit isn't the only option if you believe a doctor provided substandard care. In New York, you can also file a complaint with the state medical board through the Office of Professional Medical Conduct, which is part of the New York State Department of Health.
This complaint process is completely separate from a lawsuit. It's not about compensating you for your injuries. Instead, it's about protecting the public by investigating whether a doctor violated professional standards and, if so, taking disciplinary action. That action can range from a warning or requirement for additional training to suspension or revocation of the doctor's medical license.
The medical board investigates complaints about things like gross negligence, repeated acts of negligence, practicing beyond the scope of competence, and professional misconduct. If a doctor has a pattern of missing preeclampsia diagnoses or failing to follow obstetric guidelines, a complaint to the medical board creates a record and could lead to oversight or restrictions on their practice.
You can file both a medical board complaint and a malpractice lawsuit. The two processes happen on different tracks and serve different purposes. A lawsuit is about making you whole financially. A medical board complaint is about addressing broader concerns about a doctor's competence and preventing future harm to other patients.
If you do file a medical board complaint, understand that the process can take months or even years, and the outcome might not give you the closure or answers you're looking for. The investigation happens confidentially, and you might not be told about the results unless there's public disciplinary action. For many families, a malpractice lawsuit provides more direct accountability and compensation for the harm that was done.
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Summing It Up
You can sue a doctor for failure to diagnose or treat preeclampsia or eclampsia if you can prove that the doctor's negligence caused preventable harm to you or your baby. These cases require showing that your provider deviated from accepted standards of obstetric care and that this deviation directly led to injuries that could have been avoided with proper diagnosis and treatment.
The medical evidence in these cases is detailed and technical. Preeclampsia and eclampsia are well-studied conditions with clear guidelines about screening, monitoring, and intervention. When doctors don't follow those guidelines and patients suffer strokes, organ damage, or worse, or when babies suffer brain injuries or death, the basis for a malpractice claim exists.
But meeting the legal standard for malpractice requires more than knowing something went wrong. It requires building a case with medical records, expert testimony, and evidence of causation. It requires filing within New York's statute of limitations. And it requires an attorney with experience handling complex medical malpractice cases who can navigate the medical and legal issues involved.
If you or your baby were harmed by a provider's failure to diagnose or treat preeclampsia or eclampsia, consulting with a medical malpractice lawyer is the first step toward understanding your rights and options. These cases matter, both for the families who have been hurt and for the broader goal of holding healthcare providers accountable to the standards that keep pregnant women and babies safe.
