Infant Injuries
Emotions run high when a child is critically injured. And when parents cannot explain an injury, the hospital setting can change instantly. Suddenly, doctors become investigators and hospital staff change the way they look at parents or caregivers. Social workers show up in the hospital room and want to talk, parents are no longer left alone with the child and police and CPS investigators are called. At that point, parents are in need of an expert Michigan infant injury defense attorney.
Unexplained injuries will very likely result in a petition being filed in court. The theory is simple: infants don't injure themselves and the parents should be able to explain it. Often times, parents are told that their explanation of events does not account for the injuries so they are deemed to be lying or hiding something. Most parents don't realize right away that they have become the target of a child abuse investigation.
Medical Defenses in Child Abuse Cases
Parents are often accused of abuse when an injury occurs which medical doctors believe is diagnostic of intentionally inflicted injury. Diagnostic and Pathognomonic are essentially the same thing. These terms are used by doctors to indicate that they can look at an injury and determine precisely the correct diagnosis. The premise, therefore, is that there are injuries which can only be caused by intentional abuse.
The problem with this approach is that once a Child Protection Team doctor diagnoses abuse, the search for a medical explanation stops and parents find themselves in court defending a child abuse case. What's worse, even the treatment of known conditions stops while the focus becomes getting the case into court or getting the child into foster care. A common example of this is when children have coagulopathy issues that are found on blood tests and the results are dismissed as irrelevant once the abuse diagnosis is made.
Although there is a lot of groundwork that parents can do, there are two things that are generally necessary to a valid courtroom medical defense. First, you must have an attorney who is comfortable with medical litigation and is used to working with medical experts. Second, you must have the right medical experts ready to testify. This can be an expensive process, which explains why so many lower income parents lose their children or end up in prison.
Michigan Child Abuse Defense Lawyers
At The Kronzek Firm, we have spent years in the trenches fighting for parents and honing our defense strategies. We have extensive experience in medical neglect and abuse defense. Our case results include family reunification in cases involving allegations of Munchhausen Syndrome by Proxy, multiple infant fracture cases, child burn cases, Shaken Baby Syndrome cases and other forms of Abusive Head Trauma allegations. We understand how to develop valid medical defenses.
If you have doctors, CPS workers and police who are rushing to judgment and accusing you of abuse, you need to act quickly to hire a law firm with a vision for how to help your cause. The Kronzek Firm offers free, absolutely confidential, consultations to prospective clients seeking to hire a child abuse defense lawyer. Our expert defense attorneys are available 24/7 for emergencies and can be reached by contacting us online or by phone.