New Hampshire Cerebral Palsy Lawyer

Peter Villari, Esq.

More than 35 years of experience in birth injury and medical malpractice law. Peter is one of our managing partners for birth injury, alongside Nicole T. Matteo, Esq. and Theresa L. Giannone, Esq. CP Family Help also works with other experienced birth injury attorneys in our nationwide network, representing families across New Hampshire and beyond in cerebral palsy cases.

35+ Years Trial Experience Medical Malpractice Attorney Birth Injury Focus

What a New Hampshire cerebral palsy lawyer is paid to do

Set aside the marketing language. The actual work is concentrated and specific: it is reading the medical record. Granite State birth injury attorneys and the specialists they hire examine every prenatal visit note, the admission triage record, all of the intrapartum monitoring tracings, any operative report from a cesarean, umbilical cord arterial and venous blood gas values, the timed Apgar entries, every line of the NICU progress notes, and the neuroimaging studies as interpreted by a board-certified pediatric neuroradiologist. The exercise comes down to one inquiry, and the documents are what answer it (not testimony from memory): did the provider depart from the statewide standard of care that RSA 508:13 establishes for New Hampshire, and is there a causal link between that departure and the brain injury that ultimately presented as cerebral palsy?

That carefully calibrated wording is intentional. The reality is that most pediatric cerebral palsy traces to causes outside any clinician’s control. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 1 in 345 American children carries a cerebral palsy diagnosis, and a substantial portion of those cases stem from chromosomal disorders, structural brain abnormalities present before delivery, intrauterine infection, or the cascade of complications that follows extreme preterm birth (none of which any bedside provider could realistically have prevented). The smaller subset of cases connects to identifiable, preventable lapses: a worsening Category III strip allowed to persist without intervention, a delayed call for surgical delivery, oxytocin administered through documented tachysystole, NRP steps performed out of sequence or omitted entirely, or a candidate for therapeutic hypothermia who never made it to the CHaD Level IV NICU before the six-hour cooling deadline closed. Which scenario fits a particular delivery is something the medical record can establish. Recollection from the delivery room rarely can.

CP Family Help operates as a guide for families trying to understand cerebral palsy, HIE, NICU injuries, and the medical questions that often go half-answered at discharge. Our intake team listens as New Hampshire parents describe what happened in pregnancy and delivery, takes the questions Granite State parents tend to raise, and explains what the chart can and cannot show. Families who decide to look at the legal side are introduced to one of our partner attorneys or a vetted New Hampshire network attorney. From there the case enters New Hampshire’s post-2023 procedural sequence: a longer consultation, HIPAA-authorized records collection, expert review under RSA 507-E:2, the writ of summons in the Superior Court, discovery, and either mediation or a jury trial. For broader background, see our explainers on the birth injury lawsuit process and what a cerebral palsy lawyer does for families nationwide.

Our partner attorneys

Our main partner attorneys for birth injury cases are Peter Villari, Esq., Nicole T. Matteo, Esq., and Theresa L. Giannone, Esq. When a family’s case is a better fit for an attorney in a different state, CP Family Help also connects families with other experienced birth injury attorneys in our network across the country, so you are matched with someone who knows the local court and the local rules.

Peter Villari

Managing Partner, Birth Injury Trial Attorney

Nicole T. Matteo

Partner, Birth Injury Trial Attorney

Theresa L. Giannone

Partner, Birth Injury Trial Attorney

Granite State families who should consider asking for a chart review

New Hampshire’s structural choices, the broad minor window through age 21, the discovery rule built right into the limitations statute, and the absence of any cap on what a jury can award, give families more runway than most states offer. The flip side: more runway means more memories grow dim, more witnesses move on, and more records become harder to track down. The diagnoses and clinical situations below are the ones that most often justify a careful look at the chart by counsel.

Diagnostic patterns that justify pulling the chart:

• A cerebral palsy diagnosis in any of the recognized motor subtypes (hemiplegic, diplegic, or quadriplegic spasticity; dyskinesia; ataxia; or mixed presentations). Background reading: our cerebral palsy overview.
• Neonatal hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy, regardless of whether therapeutic cooling was started. Background reading: our HIE explainer.
• Periventricular leukomalacia (white-matter injury) on neonatal head ultrasound or MRI, most commonly in preterm infants. Background reading: our PVL guide.
• Intracranial bleeding patterns identified in the neonatal period: intraventricular, intraparenchymal, subdural, or subgaleal hemorrhage.
• Neonatal seizures documented on EEG, particularly those starting in the first three days of life.
• Kernicterus or untreated severe jaundice that breached AAP phototherapy or exchange-transfusion guidelines.
• An Erb’s or Klumpke’s palsy diagnosis after a labor record describing shoulder dystocia or a complicated vaginal delivery.
• Substantial gaps in motor, communication, or feeding milestones where the birth record contains complications.

Clinical events from the pregnancy, labor, or NICU course that warrant a closer look:

• A documented maternal complication (severe preeclampsia, poorly controlled gestational diabetes, ICP, IUGR, oligohydramnios) where monitoring intensity in the chart appears below what the situation called for
• Persistent Category II or Category III tracings that continued without IUR maneuvers, maternal repositioning, fetal scalp stimulation, or movement toward delivery
• A cesarean indication entered into the record well before the operation actually began
• An oxytocin or prostaglandin agent administered before the EFM strip showed uterine tachysystole and a falling baseline
• Vacuum or forceps deliveries where an infant injury was subsequently documented
• Umbilical cord events (prolapse, true knot, nuchal cord) where the response time in the chart was slow
• Late identification of acute obstetric catastrophes such as placental abruption, uterine rupture, or vasa previa
• A NICU admission for respiratory failure, refractory hypoglycemia, severe jaundice, suspected sepsis, or convulsions

No individual item above proves a New Hampshire clinician fell short. Together with qualified expert review under RSA 507-E:2, however, items like these are the recurring patterns that signal whether the statewide standard of care was met. The answer comes from the chart, not from any list, and certainly not from a parent’s memory of what was said in the delivery room at three in the morning.

Things New Hampshire parents tend to remember from those first hours

Some of the most clinically significant facts in a New Hampshire birth injury matter live in the moments parents recall most vividly, even when they had no medical vocabulary for what they were watching. None of the observations below proves anything went wrong. Each is the kind of detail an experienced New Hampshire birth injury attorney listens for in the first call, because each correlates with a pattern the medical experts will later examine in detail:

• Long stretches of non-reassuring or absent-variability fetal heart tracings on the monitor before delivery
• An emergency cesarean the team said would happen immediately but visibly did not
• An induction medication started, followed within minutes by a worrying change in the baby’s heart rate
• A newborn delivered limp, blue, unresponsive, or not breathing on their own
• Apgar scores in the 0–3 or 0–5 range at 1, 5, and 10 minutes of life
• Positive-pressure ventilation, intubation, or chest compressions performed in the delivery room, then a NICU transfer
• An order for therapeutic cooling, or transfer to Dartmouth-Hitchcock’s Level IV NICU at the Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth Hitchcock
• A later head MRI, head ultrasound, or CT showing brain injury, white-matter abnormalities, or hemorrhage
• Different team members offering different accounts of what actually happened

Whether any of these adds up to a preventable injury is not a question parents are supposed to answer alone. That work belongs to qualified New Hampshire birth injury counsel and the medical experts who actually read the chart.

New Hampshire medical malpractice law: a statewide standard and very few procedural walls

New Hampshire medical malpractice law is unusual for what it does not contain. There is no special pediatric statute of repose, no statutory ceiling on what a jury can award, and (since July 2023) no mandatory pretrial screening panel. The framework that does control a Granite State cerebral palsy case is built from seven moving parts, drawn from Title LII of the Revised Statutes Annotated, the New Hampshire Rules of Civil Procedure, and the New Hampshire Supreme Court’s landmark malpractice decisions.

1. The three-year personal-injury clock with a built-in discovery rule

Unlike most New England states, New Hampshire does not apply a medical-malpractice-specific limitations period to malpractice claims. The applicable statute is the general personal injury rule at RSA 508:4. A claim must be commenced within three years of the act or omission, with one critical proviso: when the injury and its causal relationship to the act could not reasonably have been discovered at the time it occurred, the three-year clock runs from the date the plaintiff discovers, or reasonably should have discovered, the harm. The discovery rule is integrated directly into the statute. New Hampshire does not require a separate plea, motion, or tolling petition to invoke it.

2. Minor tolling under RSA 508:8 that runs to age 21

New Hampshire minor tolling is among the broadest in the region. RSA 508:8 suspends the limitations period during the child’s minority. Once the child reaches age 18, the three-year clock at RSA 508:4 begins. The practical effect is a window that almost always remains open until the child’s twenty-first birthday for a cerebral palsy case that arose at or near birth. This is the polar opposite of the rule that prevails in neighboring Maine, where a minor birth-injury action is cut off at the earlier of six years from accrual or age 21 (and for newborn injuries, the six-year prong wins the race). New Hampshire’s approach gives families substantially more time, which is one reason serious counsel still prefer an earlier rather than a later call.

3. The unenforceable older medical malpractice statute and Carson v. Maurer

The 1977 legislature enacted RSA 507-C, a comprehensive medical liability statute that imposed a two-year limitations period for malpractice claims, capped non-economic damages at $250,000, abolished the collateral source rule, mandated periodic payment of large future-damages awards, and constrained attorney contingency fees. In Carson v. Maurer, 120 N.H. 925 (1980), the New Hampshire Supreme Court held that the statute violated the equal protection guarantees of the New Hampshire Constitution by singling out medical malpractice victims for harsher treatment than other tort plaintiffs. The court rejected the limitations period, the damages cap, and the additional restrictions in a single opinion. RSA 507-C remains in the New Hampshire code but is not enforced. The general personal injury rules govern in its place.

4. No statutory cap on damages, confirmed twice

The point on damages caps was made forcefully and then made again. After Carson, the legislature enacted RSA 508:4-d, an $875,000 cap on non-economic damages in personal injury cases generally, not limited to malpractice. The Supreme Court struck that one down too in Brannigan v. Usitalo, 134 N.H. 50 (1991), reasoning that Carson’s objection to caps was structural, not specific to the medical malpractice context. The practical result: a New Hampshire jury hearing a cerebral palsy case is not constrained by any statutory ceiling. The verdict reflects the evidence on past and future medical care, therapy, equipment, lost earning capacity, pain and suffering, and loss of life’s enjoyment, with no legislatively fixed maximum on any component.

5. The repealed mandatory screening panel under RSA 519-B

From 2005 through mid-2023, every New Hampshire medical malpractice case was routed through a mandatory pretrial screening panel under RSA 519-B. The panel had three members: a Superior Court judge as chair, an attorney, and a healthcare provider in the defendant’s general specialty. Panel findings were generally inadmissible at trial unless unanimous in favor of one side. Effective July 1, 2023, the legislature repealed RSA 519-B in its entirety. New Hampshire cases now proceed directly from the filing of a writ in the Superior Court into ordinary civil litigation, without the panel layer. The change matters: the procedural sequence in New Hampshire is now meaningfully shorter than in Maine (where the Maine Health Security Act screening panel under 24 M.R.S. §§ 2851–2859 remains mandatory), and the case timeline reflects it.

6. Expert testimony requirements under RSA 507-E:2

Expert proof in a New Hampshire malpractice case is governed by RSA 507-E:2. The plaintiff must establish the applicable standard of care, the defendant’s departure from it, and that the departure caused the injury, through expert witnesses who actively practice or teach in the defendant’s area of healthcare at the time of the alleged negligence. RSA 507-E:1 defines “health care provider” for these purposes, and the expert qualification requirements apply to physicians, nurses, midwives, and the various other licensed clinicians who may appear in a New Hampshire birth-injury chart. The expert team for a cerebral palsy case typically includes maternal-fetal medicine, obstetrics, neonatology, pediatric neurology, neuroradiology, and a life care planner.

7. The statewide standard of care under RSA 508:13 and Smith v. Cote

New Hampshire long ago discarded the locality rule that some states still follow. The standard of care is set statewide. RSA 508:13 directs the trier of fact to apply the standards and recommended practices of the profession, the training, experience, and professed degree of skill of the average practitioner in the field, and all other relevant circumstances, without limitation to any particular geographic area. The New Hampshire Supreme Court applied this framework in Smith v. Cote, 128 N.H. 231 (1986). The practical consequence is that a defendant in Berlin or Colebrook is held to the same clinical standard as a defendant in Manchester or Lebanon, and a national-caliber expert can speak directly to that standard without needing local credentials.

Common negligence patterns examined in New Hampshire birth injury cases

Every Granite State case turns on its own chart. Across meritorious New Hampshire cerebral palsy matters, however, certain clinical patterns surface repeatedly. The two clusters below capture the themes obstetric and neonatology experts evaluate most closely. None of the items establishes malpractice by itself; each is the kind of finding that, taken together with the full record, sometimes does.

Labor and delivery patterns under examination:

• Fetal heart rate monitoring failures. Category II or III tracings allowed to continue when the statewide standard would have called for intrauterine resuscitation, position changes, scalp stimulation, or expedited delivery.
• Late decision-to-incision intervals. A cesarean indication identified earlier in the chart than the surgery was actually started, including delays well past the 30-minute window ACOG associates with emergent indications.
• Uterine tachysystole on Pitocin. Hyperstimulation that compromised placental perfusion without documented de-escalation of the infusion.
• Shoulder dystocia handled outside protocol. Excessive lateral traction, skipped maneuvers, or a sequence that did not follow the HELPERR algorithm.
• Unrecognized maternal infection. Chorioamnionitis or untreated Group B strep colonization that flowed into neonatal sepsis or HIE.
• Late recognition of obstetric emergencies. Placental abruption, uterine rupture, cord prolapse, or vasa previa with warning signs visible on the chart earlier than the intervention.
• Operative delivery injuries. Forceps or vacuum extraction applied outside appropriate indications or in a manner that produced intracranial or brachial plexus injury.

Neonatal-period patterns under examination:

• NRP omissions. A depressed newborn who needed positive-pressure ventilation, intubation, or chest compressions and did not receive them on time or in the correct order.
• Missed therapeutic hypothermia window. An HIE candidate who met cooling criteria but was not cooled within the six-hour window, including delayed transfer up the levels of care to the Level IV NICU at Dartmouth-Hitchcock.
• Unrecognized neonatal seizures. Subtle ictal activity not captured on EEG or not treated promptly.
• Bilirubin escalation gaps. Bilirubin levels that crossed the AAP phototherapy or exchange-transfusion thresholds without timely escalation.
• Persistent hypoglycemia. Newborn blood glucose readings repeatedly low and uncorrected.
• Failure to transfer. A deteriorating newborn at a community New Hampshire hospital who needed the higher-acuity NICU at Dartmouth-Hitchcock, Elliot, Catholic Medical Center, or Southern New Hampshire Medical Center and did not arrive in time.

The tentative language above (“arguably below standard,” “may have departed”) is not lawyer evasion. It is the only honest way to describe possible negligence before qualified experts have examined the underlying record. The complimentary chart review Granite State birth injury counsel conducts is precisely the step that converts that tentativeness into a concrete answer.

The records review: what counsel pulls and why

A New Hampshire birth injury investigation is built from documents, not impressions. Experienced counsel knows exactly which records matter and how to obtain them efficiently. The standard New Hampshire record-pull divides naturally into two work streams, one focused on the pregnancy and delivery, the other on the newborn course and the developmental follow-up that came after.

New Hampshire families do not need to hunt down any of these before reaching out. After a HIPAA authorization is signed, partner counsel obtains the records directly from the relevant New Hampshire hospitals, providers, and the FCESS regional office, at no cost to the family.

How a New Hampshire cerebral palsy case typically moves

The Granite State arc has been shorter and more direct since the July 2023 repeal of the RSA 519-B screening panel. A New Hampshire case now moves straight from filing into ordinary Superior Court litigation. The phases below describe the sequence most New Hampshire birth-injury matters follow.

Recoveries: what the numbers can look like

The amounts below are de-identified birth-injury results from the firm-wide docket our partner attorneys carry. None happened in New Hampshire, and none is a forecast for any other matter. Each turned on its specific clinical record, named defendants, jurisdictional venue, and available insurance coverage. The structural relevance for Granite State families is what those numbers represent: because no statutory ceiling has survived constitutional review here (the Carson and Brannigan decisions saw to that), a New Hampshire jury or negotiated resolution can place a value on the full projected lifetime care plan. For a catastrophically injured child, that lifetime figure is the entire ballgame.

Past results do not guarantee future outcomes. Each case is unique.

Verdicts and settlements at this scale work across a lifetime. They fund years of clinical therapy, neurology and developmental visits, mobility and communication devices, the renovations that make a house liveable for a wheelchair user, transportation that travels with the family, and the trained hands that step in when parents need to sleep. The reason Granite State families take this path is the same reason they call in the first place: to anchor the financial dimension so the family can keep its energy where it has to be, with the child.

What a New Hampshire cerebral palsy recovery is designed to cover

A meaningful Granite State recovery in a cerebral palsy case is scaled to the decades ahead, not to the receipts on the kitchen table. With no surviving cap in New Hampshire constitutional law, the verdict or settlement can match the actual projected need. The categories that consistently appear in a New Hampshire cerebral palsy life-care plan and recovery structure are:

• Healthcare across the child’s lifespan. Bills already received are only a fraction; the recovery is built around projected outpatient visits, hospitalizations, surgeries, medications, durable medical equipment, and specialist follow-up over decades.
• Therapies dosed to each developmental phase. PT, OT, speech-language, feeding, and behavioral therapy hours scaled up or down as the child’s needs evolve from infancy through adulthood.
• Mobility, communication, and assistive devices. Power and manual wheelchairs, speech-generating devices, gait trainers, standers, custom seating, and bracing, with realistic replacement intervals factored in.
• Home and transportation accessibility. Permanent grade-level entries, ceiling track lifts, roll-in showers, widened interior passages, and an adapted vehicle for safe routine transport.
• Skilled care at home. Trained nursing and aide coverage for medical management, feeding routines, personal care, and overnight monitoring as clinically indicated.
• Special education enrichment and post-secondary supports. Services beyond what a New Hampshire IEP provides through age 21, transition-to-adulthood programming, vocational training, and supported employment.
• Lost lifetime earning capacity. The wage trajectory an unimpaired version of the child would have followed, calculated by a vocational economist against the child’s now-projected limitations.
• Non-economic harms with no statutory ceiling. Pain, suffering, disfigurement, mental anguish, and diminished quality of life are all recoverable on the proof; the Carson and Brannigan line of cases removed any legislated maximum.
• Family-side claims authorized under New Hampshire law. Spousal loss of consortium and parental claims tied to the caregiving burden, where the underlying facts support them.

What any individual New Hampshire matter actually produces is a function of multiple variables: the depth of the liability proof, the long-term clinical picture the pediatric neurologists describe, the detail of the life-care planner’s analysis, the policy limits behind each defendant, and whether the 51-percent comparative fault rule eats into a portion of the gross verdict. For substantial future-damages numbers, counsel often arranges part of the recovery as structured periodic payments or pours it into a special-needs trust to protect Medicaid and SSI eligibility. Both mechanisms run through the Superior Court when the client is a minor.

A practical first-week list for New Hampshire parents

Nothing on the list that follows commits a family to a lawsuit. Each entry protects an option that erodes with delay.

Indicators it is time to request a New Hampshire records review

An intake conversation is worth scheduling whenever any of the situations below describes your family. Even when the conclusion is “there is no case here,” you walk away with a definitive answer without any out-of-pocket cost.

• The child carries a diagnosis of cerebral palsy, HIE, PVL, brachial plexus injury (Erb’s or Klumpke’s), or another high-risk condition whose origin traces to the perinatal period
• A persistent instinct that something around labor, delivery, or the early NICU stay was handled wrong has stayed with you and has not faded
• Different members of the hospital team have given different accounts, or core questions have simply gone unanswered
• The projected lifetime cost of your child’s care has begun to look impossible
• A pediatrician, therapist, or relative has suggested an outside legal opinion is worth getting
• You just want a qualified outside review of the chart so the uncertainty closes one way or the other

The Granite State’s tolling generosity (window open through age 21) ranks among the broadest pediatric medical-malpractice windows in the United States. Even so, that broad window narrows in practical terms when key records have been archived, witnesses have changed jobs, or therapy and FCESS files have scattered across too many providers to chase down years later. An early intake call (even one that ends without litigation) preserves the evidentiary record and keeps choices on the table.

How to evaluate a New Hampshire cerebral palsy lawyer

The genuine fit for a New Hampshire cerebral palsy case is not measured by billboard saturation or peer-rating badges. It is an attorney whose day-to-day work centers on obstetric and neonatal records, who can carry a multi-year file without losing momentum, and who treats your family the way you would want anyone treated. The questions below are worth bringing to any consultation interview:

New Hampshire communities we work with

Our partner attorneys and network counsel work with New Hampshire families wherever they live and wherever their child was born, from the Merrimack Valley and the Seacoast through Concord, the Monadnock Region, the Upper Valley, the Lakes Region, and the North Country. Common service areas include:

Where the child was born does not present an obstacle. Each of New Hampshire’s ten counties has a Superior Court location that hears civil matters at the trial level. Venue analysis depends on where the care was provided, where the defendant resides or has a principal place of business, or where the plaintiff resides. Choosing the right venue is part of the attorney’s job after the chart has been read.

New Hampshire hospital systems where birth injuries occur

The facilities profiled below handle most New Hampshire deliveries. Naming any one of them is not a charge of wrongdoing. Each runs thousands of routine, uneventful births every year. Their appearance on this page reflects nothing more than the fact that Granite State newborns come into the world inside these systems, and that medical-record investigations sometimes do as well.

• Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center (Lebanon) is the flagship of Dartmouth Health and the only academic medical center in New Hampshire. The Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth Hitchcock (CHaD) houses the only Level IV NICU in the state, alongside the only pediatric trauma program (Level II). DHMC accepts inborn and outborn transfers of critically ill newborns from across northern New England.
• Elliot Hospital (Manchester) is the cornerstone of Solution Health and the largest provider of comprehensive care in southern New Hampshire, with 296 beds, an ACS Level II Trauma Center designation, the only dedicated Pediatric Emergency Department in the state, and a Level III NICU caring for more than 600 critically ill or premature infants each year.
• Catholic Medical Center (Manchester) is operated by HCA Healthcare and includes a Level III NICU among its women’s and children’s services.
• Southern New Hampshire Medical Center (Nashua), also part of Solution Health, includes a Level III NICU serving Hillsborough County and the Massachusetts border region.
• Concord Hospital (Concord) is the flagship of the Concord Hospital network, with affiliated hospitals at Franklin and Laconia. The Concord campus operates a Level II NICU.
• Wentworth-Douglass Hospital (Dover) is part of Beth Israel Lahey Health (and historically affiliated with Mass General Brigham), with a Level II NICU serving the Seacoast.
• Exeter Hospital (Exeter), also affiliated with Beth Israel Lahey Health, and Portsmouth Regional Hospital (Portsmouth), affiliated with HCA Healthcare, deliver babies along the Seacoast with onward referral north to DHMC or south to Boston for the most complex cases.
• Cheshire Medical Center (Keene), part of Dartmouth Health, serves the Monadnock Region.
• Frisbie Memorial Hospital (Rochester) is part of HCA Healthcare and serves Strafford County.
• Other community hospitals across New Hampshire (Huggins in Wolfeboro, Cottage in Woodsville, Littleton Regional, Speare Memorial in Plymouth, Memorial in North Conway), with onward referral to the Level IV NICU at DHMC when neonatal complications require it.

Which hospital provided the care is rarely what determines whether a claim is viable. What matters is what the labor flow chart, the EFM strip, the operative dictation, the cord blood gas results, the placental histology report, and the NICU progress notes actually show. Our partner attorneys go through them line by line, with no charge to the family at the outset.

Where New Hampshire cerebral palsy cases are filed

A New Hampshire medical malpractice case is filed in the New Hampshire Superior Court, the state’s trial court of general jurisdiction. Civil claims with damages over $1,500 belong in Superior Court. New Hampshire is organized into ten counties, each with its own Superior Court location. Granite State birth-injury matters most often land in Hillsborough County (Manchester and Nashua, home of Elliot, Catholic Medical Center, and Southern NH Medical Center), Merrimack County (Concord, home of Concord Hospital), Grafton County (Lebanon, where Dartmouth-Hitchcock and the only Level IV NICU in the state are located), Rockingham County (Exeter and Portsmouth, home of Exeter Hospital and Portsmouth Regional), Strafford County (Dover and Rochester, home of Wentworth-Douglass and Frisbie Memorial), Cheshire County (Keene, where Cheshire Medical Center is based), and the other Granite State counties (Belknap, Carroll, Coos, and Sullivan) where smaller community hospitals operate. Trial-level matters are heard by a Granite State jury. Appeals from the Superior Court go directly to the New Hampshire Supreme Court; New Hampshire has no intermediate appellate court. Venue selection is the attorney’s job, not the family’s.

Local New Hampshire resources for families

The organizations below offer support, services, or information that Granite State families often find useful after a cerebral palsy diagnosis. CP Family Help has no affiliation with any of them, and inclusion here is not an endorsement of any program. Always confirm eligibility and current services directly with the organization:

• Family-Centered Early Supports and Services (FCESS), New Hampshire’s IDEA Part C early intervention program operated by the Department of Health and Human Services for infants and toddlers (birth through age 2) with developmental delays or established conditions.
• New Hampshire Department of Education, Bureau of Special Education, for IDEA Part B services (ages 3 through 21), including IEP development and special-education-related services.
• Parent Information Center of New Hampshire, the state’s federally designated Parent Training and Information Center, providing information, training, and family support across the IDEA system.
• New Hampshire DHHS Bureau of Developmental Services, which administers the system of supports for children and adults with developmental disabilities and acquired brain disorders.
• New Hampshire Judicial Branch, the official portal for the Superior Court, Circuit Court, and Supreme Court, with directories of all ten county Superior Court locations and current procedural rules.
• CDC Cerebral Palsy resources, for general medical information on cerebral palsy.

What happens after a New Hampshire family reaches out

Picking up the phone to ask about a potential birth injury claim is rarely an easy decision, especially when the week already contains pediatric specialist visits, therapy sessions, and the ongoing concern that pulls at every parent of an injured child. So the sequence is laid out below in straightforward terms, allowing Granite State families to understand the full process before deciding whether to call:

The confidentiality protection is total. Whatever you discuss with intake personnel or with the attorney remains within that protected channel, and no procedural step is taken without your explicit written authorization. If, at the end of the process, your family chooses not to pursue litigation, that determination closes the file. There will be no further phone outreach, no data passed to any marketing partner, and no charge for the consultation time.