Seattle Midwives and Birth Center Sued

• Medical Malpractice
• Seattle Midwives and Birth Center Sued For Medical Negligence

Dangers of Having Baby Delivered by Non-Nurse Midwives

Baby delivered by Non-Nurse Midwives and Student Midwife at Birthing Center resulting in Brain-Damaged Child that will need lifelong support.

Seattle, Washington, April 2, 2023 WHAT: Announcement of the details of a lawsuit in King County |Court, which will be filed early Monday morning, April 3 by Spokane, WA residents Savanna and Colton Brown against Puget Sound Midwives and Birth Center, LLC d/b/a Lake Washington Midwives; Bastyr University; Britney Zell, MSM, LM, CPM; Marlee Adams, LM; Jessica Swan, LM, CPM; Pediatrix Medical Group of Washington, Inc., P.S. d/b/a Eastside Maternal-Fetal Medicine Specialists; and Darcy Barry, M.D.

WHEN: Monday, April 3, 11:00 am PT

WHERE: The Financial Center 1215 Fourth Avenue, 3rd Floor Seattle, Washington 98161

WHO: Les Weisbrod, attorney for the plaintiffs, Miller Weisbrod Olesky LLC Maria Diamond, attorney for the plaintiffs, Diamond Massong PLLC Savanna and Colton Brown, plaintiffs

BACKGROUND: On September 27, 2021 26-year-old Savanna Brown presented to Puget Sound Midwives birthing center in Kirkland, Washington to initiate prenatal care.

On January 6, 2022 Savanna presented to Pediatrix for a fetal anatomy survey and was seen by Darcy Barry, M.D. This examination revealed that Mrs. Brown’s baby was in the 99th percentile for estimated fetal weight. Dr. Barry’s summary of the examination provides that the fetus was “large for the gestational age of 20w 0d.” This made Mrs. Brown’s pregnancy high risk and not suitable for non-nurse midwives to follow alone without medical supervision.

The standard of care in obstetrics requires that doctors who evaluate a fetus that is in the 99th percentile for estimated fetal weight at 20 weeks gestational age must follow-up the with the mother to recommend that care not be provided solely by midwives and that delivery take place in a hospital.

On May 20, 2022

Savanna Brown presented to Puget Sound Midwives’ birthing center at approximately 0244 for spontaneous labor.

• Through the course of her labor the student midwife as well as the supervising midwives failed to properly monitor Mrs. Brown and her baby. Mrs. Brown had tachycardia (a high heart rate) and the baby had fetal heart rate decelerations. Both mother and baby’s conditions made this a high-risk delivery requiring a hospital and medical doctor be utilized rather than non-nurse midwives at a birthing center.


• At least an hour before Zeke Brown’s head became stuck in the birth canal, Mrs. Brown asked to go to a hospital and her request was ignored by the midwives.

• At 0913, the fetal head was delivered. However, a shoulder dystocia (i.e., the baby’s head is out of the birth canal, but the rest of the baby is stuck at the shoulders) was also encountered at this time. Student Midwife Adams placed Mrs. Brown in a hands and knees position to attempt to dislodge the impacted shoulder. This maneuver failed to resolve the shoulder dystocia.


• After 90 seconds of Student Midwife Adams’ attempts to address the shoulder dystocia, Midwife Zell took over and began “abduction and adduction” of the fetal shoulder by inserting her hand into Mrs. Brown’s vagina to manually dislodge the shoulder. This failed. She also attempted multiple other maneuvers to effectuate delivery, including the McRoberts maneuver and moving Mrs. Brown into a runner’s lunge position, but these were also unsuccessful.


• After approximately 3 minutes and 50 seconds, Midwife Swan stepped in and attempted delivery. She also attempted McRoberts maneuver and eventually delivered Zeke Brown at 0918 by shoulder shrug, which involved breaking Zeke Brown’s clavicle. The interval between delivery of the fetal head and the delivery of the body was approximately 4 minutes and 30 seconds. After delivery, Zeke Brown appeared “pale and floppy” and he was without respiratory effort.


• At approximately 0945, EMS arrived with Zeke Brown at Evergreen Hospital. After arrival, his initial blood gas results showed he had sustained a lack of oxygen during labor and delivery.


• He was then transferred to Swedish First Hill Hospital for therapeutic hypothermia (cooling) treatment for severe hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy.

An MRI of Zeke Brown’s brain on May 26, 2022, showed that Zeke suffered hypoxic ischemic neurologic injury. He remained inpatient until he was discharged on June 20, 2022. He has been subsequently diagnosed with global delays, epilepsy that is secondary to perinatal hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy, static encephalopathy, and emerging spasticity.

Zeke Brown will need continuing healthcare for his entire life with serious, permanent disabilities. The Brown family has incurred and will continue to incur significant medical expenses for the remainder of Zeke’s life, have suffered and will continue to suffer substantial pain and anguish.

The lawsuit charges the defendants with multiple instances of violating the standard of care as listed in the petition and illustrates the dangers of having a baby at a midwife birthing center with no doctors present. Les Weisbrod, a nationally recognized medical malpractice attorney and past president of the American Association for Justice (the world’s largest trial lawyer association), is representing the Brown family, in collaboration with Seattle attorney Maria S. Diamond, a past president of the Washington State Association for Justice and a member of the Board of Governors of the American Association for Justice (AAJ). Mr. Weisbrod has represented many babies with birth injuries, who need lifelong medical support. As a national birth injury attorney, he has settled over 230 medical negligence cases for more than $1,000,000 each.

Mr. Weisbrod said, “Usually when there is a catastrophic outcome as with Zeke Brown, multiple health care providers are at fault which is what happened here. Dr. Barry failed to continue monitoring Mrs. Brown and recommend that the delivery take place in a hospital. Not only did these improperly trained non-nurse midwives not recognize:

• the impending fetal distress,
• the lack of medical equipment to handle such a birth at their birthing center
• the immediate need for a medical doctor
• the urgency to transport the infant to a hospital.

They also atrociously ignored the heart-breaking pleas of Savanna Brown to go to a hospital.”

“Savanna and Colton Brown want to make sure this doesn’t happen to someone else in Seattle, Washington or anywhere in the United States. They hope that by calling attention to what happened and the need to file this lawsuit, it will serve as a wake-up call of the danger involved in delivering a baby at a midwife birthing center,” Weisbrod said.

Is Your Child’s Birth Injury the Result of Medical Malpractice?

Parents whose children suffer birth injuries from perinatal anemia related birth trauma or birth complications want and deserve answers as to the cause of their child’s birth injury and whether mistakes by the doctors and nurses contributed to the injury.

• Were there signs of anemia during the pregnancy, labor, and delivery process, or presence of risk factors, which were either not recognized or properly treated?
• Was the pregnancy not handled as a high risk pregnancy despite clear signs and risk factors?
• During the labor and delivery, were there clear indications that the baby was suffering from fetal distress, but appropriate actions were not taken by the obstetrician or nurses?
• Was there a delay in diagnosis of perinatal anemia that led to later complications, including brain injury?
• Did the medical team fail to order a series of tests to diagnose this birth complication in a timely manner?
• Was the decision to perform a cesarean delivery delayed leading to birth trauma during vaginal delivery or labor?
• Did the neonatal resuscitation team fail to quickly begin important breathing support?
• Should brain cooling (also called “hypothermia therapy”) have been provided to your baby, but the doctors and nurses failed to perform the appropriate tests or ignored the results of the tests?

Our Seattle birth injury attorneys have extensive experience in this and all areas of birth injury medical malpractice. The lawyers and nurses at Miller Weisbrod Olesky will help you determine if mistakes of the medical providers caused a birth injury to your child, including Hypoxic-Ischemic Encephalopathy (HIE) or cerebral palsy.

Our award-winning birth injury attorneys represent families all over the United States in their time of need after a wrongful birth. We use our skills and expertise to obtain for you and your child a medical malpractice settlement that will help provide specialized medical therapy in order to maximize the quality of life and independence of your child throughout their life.

Sometimes families are reluctant to contact a medical malpractice lawyer. It’s also not uncommon for parents to feel overwhelmed by the responsibilities they encounter in caring for their injured child and worried that they will not be able to help out in a lawsuit involving their child’s birth injury. Our Seattle birth injury attorneys and nursing staff will address these hesitations and concerns, so you can focus on your child and maximizing their care.

Registered Nurses and Nurse-Attorneys Are a Vital Part of Our Birth Injury Team…and Yours

Most birth injury law firms will employ one or two nurses to assist the review of cases and medical research. But Miller Weisbrod Olesky offers an unmatched number of nurses and nurse-attorney employees support to both the birth injury attorneys and our clients.

Our team of registered nursing staff and nurse-attorneys bring a deep level of medical and personal insight to every client’s case. Our nursing team includes both an experienced labor and delivery nurse as well as an ICU nurse. Working closely with the rest of the team, they investigate the reasons behind a birth injury and how medical professionals breached their standard of care.

Why Should You Talk with the Highly Capable Attorneys at Miller Weisbrod Olesky?

The only way to find out if you have a birth injury case is to talk to a lawyer experienced in birth injury lawsuits. It’s not uncommon that a birth related complication results in a preventable birth injury, including cerebral palsy, but it takes a detailed expert review by a birth injury attorney of the medical records from your child’s birth to determine if the birth injury was the result of medical malpractice.

At Miller Weisbrod Olesky, a team of committed lawyers, nurses and paralegals uses our detailed medical negligence case review process to assess your child’s potential birth injury case. We start by learning more about you and your child and the status of meeting/missing developmental milestones. Then we gather medical records to determine what happened before, during pregnancy. We call in documented and proven medical experts who review your records and let us know if they think medical errors could have caused your child’s injuries.

If we feel medical negligence caused or contributed to wrongful birth in your case, we meet with you to discuss how you can receive compensation from the medical professionals who made the errors. Our birth injury attorneys have recovered millions of dollars in settlements for families of children that have suffered a birth injury.

At no point in our legal intake process will we ask you to pay anything. The medical review of your case and the consultation are free. We only receive payment when you do no matter how long or tough your case is.

Contact Our Birth Injury Lawyers