Fourteen Attorneys at Hall, Prangle and Schoonveld LLC have been recognized as 2024 Super Lawyers or 2024 Rising Stars.

The March of Dimes recently released the “Nowhere To Go: Maternity Care Deserts Across the U.S.” report for 2022. A maternity care desert is defined as any county without a hospital or birth center offering obstetric care and without any obstetric providers.

Intrapartum uterine contractions and engagement of the fetus in the birth canal can compress the fetal head. There is a long-standing view that this head compression is benign in most cases, and that it’s a common cause of intrapartum fetal heart rate decelerations.

Seven attorneys from Hall Prangle and Schoonveld, LLC (HPS) have been recognized in Thompson Reuters 2022 Super Lawyers Magazine Illinois edition.

According to a report posted on Frontiers in Pediatrics, doctors followed four pregnant women from the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic – Wuhan, China – who tested positive for COVID-19. The women all gave birth while actively symptomatic. The conclusion after testing and observation was that the COVID-19 virus did not pass from the mother to the fetus, and the infants were born without any of the respiratory signs of COVID-19.

A Google search of a phrase like "Birth Trauma causes Autism" will result in links to, inter alia, various legal websites asserting that trauma during labor and delivery is a cause of a child's autism or behavioral issues. The most recent of a series of medical articles, however, points to a potential alternative cause – maternal use of acetaminophen.

In the second standard, Reduce the likelihood of harm related to maternal severe hypertension/preeclampsia, there are six elements of performance.Both of these standards address prevention, recognition, treatment and education to improve maternal outcomes. While improving outcomes is a goal every organization will support, we feel these standards may also offer the opportunity to reduce potential liability and litigation.

Maternal hemorrhage is one of the most important clinical issues in obstetrics today – and a not uncommon source of potential liability in obstetrical negligence litigation. This new standard, "Reduce the likelihood of harm related to maternal hemorrhage," was based on recommendations from technical advisors, clinicians, and administrators and included extensive literature review.

HPS attorneys David Hall and Sabina Babel secured a defense verdict in a high profile case against the most respected plaintiff's law firm in the city. The Chicago Daily Law Bulletin talked to David Hall about that case.

In June 2019, HPS attorneys David Hall and Sabina Babel secured a defense verdict for a local teaching hospital in an intrapartum maternal death case involving the labor and delivery of a 40-year-old endocrinologist on December 9, 2012.

Sabina Babel, Ana Cazacu, Richard De Jong and John Travis have been named "Rising Stars" by Illinois Super Lawyers for 2019.