Fulginiti Law
Upper Darby is a township that used to deliver its own babies. For years, Delaware County Memorial Hospital in Drexel Hill — inside the township itself — delivered more than 1,800 babies a year, until its owner, Prospect Medical, closed the hospital in 2022. Today an Upper Darby family in labor drives out of the township to Lankenau Medical Center in Wynnewood, Riddle Hospital in Media, or Bryn Mawr Hospital, and when one of those deliveries ends in injury, the case carries two problems at once: what happened in the delivery room, and — for births from the Delaware County Memorial era — whether the records of a closed hospital can still be found. Fulginiti Law’s birth injury practice handles both problems.
A claim of this kind is not an accusation that a hard delivery happened. Complications arise even under careful care. The legal question is narrower: whether the team recognized the complication in front of them, used the maneuvers and restraint the situation called for, and protected the baby through the most dangerous minutes of the birth. Fulginiti Law is a Philadelphia-based firm that limits its work to catastrophic injury, and it serves Upper Darby families whose children face harm that will not resolve in a few weeks. Our guide to how Pennsylvania treats malpractice claims involving children explains some of the background; this page focuses on a delivery emergency measured in seconds, and on the paper trail that survives a hospital’s closure.
Delaware County Memorial Hospital stood in Drexel Hill, in the heart of Upper Darby Township, and its maternity unit was a genuine community institution — more than 1,800 babies a year were born there before Prospect Medical closed the hospital in 2022. Generations of Upper Darby families started in that building. Its closure did not just move an address on a birth certificate; it ended the township’s own delivery care and scattered its obstetricians, midwives, and labor nurses across the region’s surviving systems.
Upper Darby babies are now born mainly at three Main Line Health hospitals: Lankenau Medical Center in Wynnewood, with its Level III neonatal intensive care unit; Riddle Hospital in Media, the county’s remaining delivery hospital on its western side; and Bryn Mawr Hospital, also supported by a Level III NICU. Each is a capable program, but each is also a drive away for a family in labor, and a baby injured at any of them will have records spread across the receiving hospital, any NICU that followed, and the pediatric specialists who take over from there.
The closure matters to older cases in a different way. A child born at Delaware County Memorial in its final years — or earlier — may now be showing the lasting effects of a delivery injury: an arm that never regained full strength, a developmental pattern that traces back to birth. The hospital being closed does not close the claim. It changes the investigation, because the chart, the monitoring tracing, and the operative notes now sit with a records custodian rather than in an active medical records department, and finding them takes deliberate, early work.
Whether the delivery happened last year at Lankenau or years ago in Drexel Hill, an Upper Darby case is filed in the same place: the Court of Common Pleas of Delaware County, in Media, the county seat.
Shoulder dystocia is one of the true emergencies of the delivery room. The baby’s head delivers, but a shoulder lodges behind the mother’s pelvic bone, and the baby cannot follow. From that moment the clock runs hard: the umbilical cord is compressed, oxygen flow is interrupted, and the team has a short window to free the baby using a recognized sequence of maneuvers — repositioning the mother, applying pressure above the pelvic bone, rotating the baby internally, delivering the posterior arm — before resorting to force.
The injury this emergency is known for is damage to the brachial plexus, the bundle of nerves running from the neck into the shoulder and arm. Those nerves are injured not by the lodging itself but by stretching — most often when traction is applied to the baby’s head to pull the baby free. A team that pulls hard instead of working the maneuver sequence can leave a newborn with a limp arm, and in the severe cases that failure becomes Erb’s palsy or a lasting loss of function in the hand and arm. The distinction between an unavoidable dystocia injury and a traction injury is one of the most contested questions in birth injury medicine, and it is answered in the delivery record: which maneuvers were documented, in what order, how long the head-to-body interval lasted, and what the baby could and could not move in the first examinations afterward.
Risk recognition matters before the emergency ever starts. A larger baby, a mother with diabetes, a labor that has stalled, a prior dystocia — these are charted facts that should change how a delivery is planned and how ready the room is. The failures we investigate in Upper Darby cases tend to fall into a pattern:
None of that can be reconstructed from memory years later — least of all when the hospital itself has closed. It has to be rebuilt from the chart, which is why the records question below is not administrative housekeeping. In an Upper Darby brachial plexus case, the records are the case.
Parents rarely arrive using legal language. They arrive with a physical therapy referral for an arm, a neurology workup, or a child who is years past a Delaware County Memorial delivery and still cannot raise one hand to shoulder height. The conditions below are the ones that most often lead Upper Darby families to ask for a records review. A diagnosis on this list does not prove negligence — each one can also occur without any error — but each is a recognized reason to have the delivery examined by someone outside the hospital.
Our overview of the legal options Pennsylvania families have after a birth injury walks through how these diagnoses translate into claims, and our guide to legal recourse where medical negligence harmed a child at birth covers related ground. What matters at the outset is simpler: if the explanation you received at discharge does not match the condition your child is living with now, the records — wherever they are now kept — should settle the question.
Pennsylvania law gives an injured child time, but it does not give a family unlimited time, and the rules reward families who move early even when a deadline looks distant. Three provisions shape almost every Upper Darby case. Our plain-language explainer on the legal standards for medical malpractice in Pennsylvania is a useful companion to what follows.
The two-year clock. Under 42 Pa.C.S. § 5524, an action to recover for injury to the person caused by another’s wrongful act or neglect must generally be commenced within two years. For the parents’ own claims — the medical bills they are personally responsible for during childhood, for example — that ordinary clock can run much sooner than families expect.
Minority tolling, with a catch. 42 Pa.C.S. § 5533(b) excludes the period of minority from the limitations calculation, so the child’s own claim generally remains available until around the 20th birthday. That protection matters enormously for children born at Delaware County Memorial before it closed: the passage of years, and the hospital’s closure, do not by themselves extinguish a child’s claim. But tolling belongs to the child. It does not extend the parents’ separate claims in the same way, and it does nothing to stop records from becoming harder to retrieve or staff from scattering. Tolling is a safety net, not a strategy.
The certificate of merit. Before a Pennsylvania professional-liability case can proceed, Pa.R.C.P. 1042.3 requires the plaintiff’s attorney to file a certificate of merit — with the complaint or within 60 days after it — certifying that an appropriate licensed professional has reviewed the matter and stated in writing that there is a reasonable probability the care fell outside acceptable standards and caused the harm. The reviewing professional is expected to meet the expert-qualification standards of the MCARE Act, 40 P.S. § 1303.512. No Upper Darby case gets filed on suspicion alone: a qualified obstetrical expert has to support it first.
Pennsylvania’s comparative negligence statute, 42 Pa.C.S. § 7102, also sits in the background. It bars recovery only when a plaintiff’s negligence is greater than the defendant’s, and under the Fair Share Act each defendant generally pays its apportioned share unless an exception applies — including a defendant found 60 percent or more liable. Where several clinicians shared a delivery, those apportionment rules shape how the case is structured; our article on comparative negligence in medical malpractice claims explains them in more depth.
Every birth injury case begins with the complete chart, but an Upper Darby case from the Delaware County Memorial era begins with a search. When a hospital closes, its medical records do not vanish — they pass to a custodian responsible for retaining and producing them — but they stop being a phone call away. Locating the custodian, submitting requests in the form the custodian requires, and confirming that what arrives is actually complete (the fetal monitoring tracing and the newborn chart are the pieces most often missing from a first production) is methodical work, and it is work that has to start before anyone can honestly tell a family whether they have a case.
The same discipline applies, with less drama, to a recent delivery at Lankenau, Riddle, or Bryn Mawr: collect the prenatal record, the nursing notes, the full tracing, the medication record, the delivery and operative notes, cord blood gas results, the newborn and NICU files, and the therapy and neurology records created since. Gaps and late entries are noted, because in a dystocia case the absence of a documented maneuver can be as informative as its presence.
Qualified medical experts then test the reconstruction. An obstetrician addresses the anticipation of the dystocia and the conduct of the delivery; a pediatric specialist in brachial plexus injury addresses which nerves were damaged and what that pattern says about the forces involved; a neonatologist addresses any oxygen-deprivation component. Their opinions are what the certificate of merit rests on, and they frame the damages side: a life-care planner projects what the child will need across a lifetime — therapy, possible nerve or orthopedic surgery, adaptive equipment, educational support — so that any demand rests on a documented plan rather than a round number.
The case is then filed in the Court of Common Pleas of Delaware County in Media and litigated there through discovery and depositions. Defendants in these cases — hospitals, practice groups, and their insurers, including successors to closed facilities — defend with their own experts, and a claim built on a complete, custodian-retrieved chart is a claim they have to take seriously.
The financial side of a serious birth injury is measured in decades, not in hospital bills. A child with a significant brachial plexus injury may need years of physical and occupational therapy, one or more surgeries, adaptive equipment for school and sport, and vocational support for work an injured arm makes harder. A child with a brain injury may need all of that and more: therapies across childhood, mobility and communication equipment replaced as the child grows, home and vehicle modifications, and, in the most severe cases, attendant care for life.
A complete Upper Darby claim therefore accounts for past and future medical care, therapy and rehabilitation, equipment and home adaptation, educational support, the child’s diminished future earning capacity, and the income parents lose when one of them cuts back work to manage appointments and care. Pennsylvania law also allows recovery for the child’s pain, suffering, and loss of the ordinary pleasures of life. Our guide to recovering compensation for catastrophic injuries in Pennsylvania walks through how those categories are assembled. Where a recovery will fund care for decades, structured settlements and special-needs planning can protect the money and coordinate it with public benefits.
None of that planning substitutes for proving fault. But it is the reason these cases are valued the way they are: the number at the end of the case has to carry a child from a delivery room in Drexel Hill, Wynnewood, Media, or Bryn Mawr through an entire life.
Fulginiti Law does not run a general personal-injury practice. The firm, led by founder Ken Fulginiti, takes catastrophic cases — the kind where an injury permanently changes what a life will look like — and birth injuries sit at the center of that work because few injuries arrive earlier or last longer. That focus shapes the practice in practical ways: fewer files at a time, expert reviewers retained at the start rather than the end, and the patience to chase a closed hospital’s records before drawing conclusions from them.
The firm is based in Philadelphia and serves Upper Darby from there; families are not asked to travel for a first conversation, and there is no fee for the initial review of a child’s records. Cases are handled on a contingency basis, which means the firm’s fee comes out of a recovery rather than out of a family’s savings during the hardest years of their child’s life. If the story of your delivery — last year, or in the last years of Delaware County Memorial — still does not add up, contact Fulginiti Law and let the chart be the judge of whether something went wrong.
Recognition applies to the named attorneys and selection years. See the linked profiles for details.
Below are answers to common questions about birth injuries in Upper Darby, PA. This information is general and not legal advice — contact our office for guidance about your specific situation.
It can, when the record shows the emergency was mishandled. Shoulder dystocia itself is a recognized complication, but a claim examines how it was anticipated and managed: whether risk factors were acted on, whether the standard maneuver sequence was used before traction, and whether the forces applied to free the baby went beyond what careful care allows.
Reviewers reconstruct the delivery from the chart — the documented maneuvers and their order, the head-to-body interval, and the newborn’s first examinations. A baby whose nerve injury pattern matches excessive traction, in a record that documents little else, presents a very different case from an unavoidable injury in a well-documented emergency.
Sources: Pa.R.C.P. 1042.3, certificate of merit rule; Fulginiti Law, birth injuries
Clinicians watch the first months closely, because many brachial plexus injuries recover as the nerves heal. Failure to regain key movements — especially against gravity in the biceps and shoulder — within the early months is a warning sign that the injury may involve torn rather than stretched nerves and may need surgical evaluation.
Legally, that timeline matters because the severity of the injury drives the value of the claim, and the medical records created during those first months document it contemporaneously. A review started early captures both the delivery record and the recovery record while treatment decisions are still being made.
Sources: CDC, traumatic brain injury signs and symptoms; Fulginiti Law, Pennsylvania malpractice claims involving children
Generally, yes. When a hospital closes, its medical records pass to a custodian charged with retaining them, and patients — or their lawyers, with proper authorization — can request them. The process is slower and less direct than asking an active hospital’s records department, and the first production is not always complete.
That is a reason to start early, not a reason to give up. An experienced firm verifies what a complete chart should contain — the tracing, the delivery and newborn notes, the operative record — and keeps requesting until the file matches, rather than evaluating a case on a partial record.
Sources: Pennsylvania Department of Health, hospital and medical records information; Fulginiti Law, birth injuries
For the child’s own claim, usually not. Pennsylvania tolls the limitations period during minority, so a child’s birth injury claim generally remains available until about the 20th birthday, even where the delivery predates the hospital’s closure by years.
The practical obstacles grow with time, though: records sit with a custodian, clinicians have scattered, and the parents’ own claims generally run on the ordinary two-year schedule regardless of tolling. An investigation that starts now is working with better evidence than one that starts in five years.
Sources: 42 Pa.C.S. § 5533(b), tolling during minority (official text); 42 Pa.C.S. § 5524, Pennsylvania personal injury limitation (official text)
Since Delaware County Memorial closed in 2022, Upper Darby families deliver mainly at Lankenau Medical Center in Wynnewood, Riddle Hospital in Media, or Bryn Mawr Hospital. The legal analysis is the same at each: what the record shows about recognition, response, and documentation during the delivery.
What changes is the evidence trail. A delivery at one hospital followed by NICU care at another produces records in two systems, and a complete review has to assemble both before the timeline of the birth can be judged fairly.
Sources: Pennsylvania Department of Health, hospital and health care facility information; Fulginiti Law, birth injuries; Fulginiti Law, legal options for birth injuries in Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania’s general limitations period for personal injury is two years, but the statute tolls that clock during childhood. Because the period of minority is not counted, a child’s own birth injury claim generally remains open until about the 20th birthday.
That long horizon is a floor of protection, not a plan. Records custodians, scattered staff, and fading recollection all work against a late start, and the parents’ own related claims may run on the ordinary two-year schedule even though the child’s does not.
Sources: 42 Pa.C.S. § 5533(b), tolling during minority (official text); 42 Pa.C.S. § 5524, Pennsylvania personal injury limitation (official text)
Yes. Claims that belong to the parents themselves — such as responsibility for medical expenses incurred while the child is a minor, and certain losses the parents personally suffered — are not sheltered by the child’s tolling rule in the same way and are generally measured against the standard two-year period.
This trap is especially sharp in older Delaware County Memorial cases, where a family may assume a closed hospital ended everything years ago. Sorting out which claim belongs to whom, and which clock governs each, is one of the first jobs in an Upper Darby intake.
Sources: 42 Pa.C.S. § 5524, Pennsylvania personal injury limitation (official text); 42 Pa.C.S. § 5533(b), tolling during minority (official text)
Pennsylvania does not let a professional-liability case proceed on an accusation alone. The plaintiff’s attorney must file a certificate of merit, with the complaint or within sixty days afterward, certifying that an appropriate licensed professional has stated in writing that there is a reasonable probability the care fell outside acceptable standards and caused the injury.
For an Upper Darby birth injury, that means a qualified obstetrical reviewer examines the complete records — including any retrieved from a closed hospital’s custodian — before the case is filed. If a qualified reviewer will not support the claim, it does not go forward.
Sources: Pa.R.C.P. 1042.3, certificate of merit rule; Fulginiti Law, legal standards for medical malpractice in Pennsylvania
A case arising from a delivery in Upper Darby Township — or from a delivery to an Upper Darby family at a neighboring hospital — belongs in the Court of Common Pleas of Delaware County in Media, the county seat. That is where the complaint is filed, where the clinicians can be deposed, and where a jury would be drawn from the community.
Most cases spend many months in discovery before any trial date, and many resolve through negotiation once the expert record is complete. The defense evaluates a claim differently when it is genuinely prepared for a Delaware County courtroom.
Sources: 42 Pa.C.S. § 7102, comparative negligence and Fair Share Act, official text; Pennsylvania Courts, Courts of Common Pleas; Fulginiti Law, contact
Nothing. The initial consultation and records review are free, and birth injury cases are handled on a contingency fee basis — the firm is paid a percentage of a recovery, so a family owes no legal fee if there is no recovery.
That structure exists because the families who most need a review are usually the ones already absorbing therapy bills and lost income. You can ask for an honest assessment — including of a delivery at a hospital that no longer exists — without adding legal debt to your child’s care.
Sources: Courts of Common Pleas (Unified Judicial System of Pennsylvania); Fulginiti Law, contact; Fulginiti Law, birth injuries
If your child was delivered at Delaware County Memorial before it closed, or at Lankenau, Riddle, or Bryn Mawr since, and lives with an arm injury, a brain injury, or a diagnosis nobody has adequately explained, you do not need certainty before you call — you need the records found and reviewed by people who read dystocia charts for a living. Call Fulginiti Law at 215-774-5162 for a free consultation, and we will tell you honestly whether the delivery record supports a claim in Delaware County or whether the medicine says otherwise.
One Commerce Square
2005 Market Street, Suite 3710
Philadelphia, PA 19103
