COUNTY SETTLES BIRTH LAWSUIT.

Byline: Staff and Wire Services

LOS ANGELES - Los Angeles County supervisors agreed to pay nearly $176,000 and provide lifetime medical care to a boy who at birth suffered brain damage blamed on High Desert Hospital staff members.

Now 6, Daniel Medrano Jr. suffers from perception and learning disabilities, and if the case went to trial the family would likely seek more than $1.9 million, a county report said in urging the settlement.

The Board of Supervisors approved the settlement Tuesday. Under the county's operating charter, the board must review any settlement valued at more than $100,000.

Besides the payment of $176,000 to the boy and his mother, the settlement includes more than $85,000 in attorney fees and $35,000 for the cost of litigation, plus $6,300 to pay off a Medi-Cal lien.

In December 1994, the boy's mother, Alicia Medrano, who was 40 and pregnant with her fourth child, was already more than a week overdue when she went in for a test at High Desert Hospital. Although the test showed that the fetus was in distress, she was allowed to leave the hospital.

Three days later, at a follow-up appointment at the county's Antelope Valley Health Center, a test again showed fetal distress. The clinic staff ordered Medrano to go immediately to Antelope Valley Hospital for a Caesarean delivery.

The baby delivered later that afternoon weighed 8 pounds 6 ounces, but he was unable to breathe because he had inhaled meconium, a fetal intestinal discharge.

The boy was sent to Huntington Memorial Hospital, where for four days he was placed on a machine to support his impaired respiratory system. The treatment can cause neurologic damage if it lasts more than several days, the county report said.

The baby spent more than a month in hospitals.

The county paid $44,317 in attorneys fees and $26,638.63 in costs in defense of the case in addition to the cost of the settlement.