Janet, Janet & Suggs, LLC’s Role in Medical Malpractice Litigation and Birth Injury Cases Involving Complex Healthcare Claims

Women's Journal Staff on September 14, 2026

Legal cases involving medical malpractice usually arise when patients or their relatives claim that their doctors did not provide the appropriate standard of care and caused severe harm or even death as a consequence. These cases are complex and involve reviewing medical history, witness statements, and clinical decisions. Cases dealing with birth injuries are among those specializations in this legal practice since there might be a range of issues connected with complications in newborns, disabilities, and the possible influence of early medical intervention on the results.

Founded in 1996, Janet, Janet & Suggs, LLC (JJS) has developed a legal practice focused in part on medical malpractice, with particular attention to birth injury cases involving cerebral palsy and other catastrophic injuries. The Maryland-based firm has represented children and families in claims involving hospitals, physicians, and healthcare institutions. Its medical malpractice practice has included cases involving alleged failures in diagnosis, treatment, monitoring, and emergency response. Over its history, JJS has reported more than $3 billion in client recoveries across various areas of litigation, either independently or with co-counsel.

A central area of the firm’s medical malpractice work has involved birth injuries and cases concerning children with cerebral palsy. Cerebral palsy is a group of neurological disorders affecting movement, balance, and posture, often resulting from damage to the developing brain. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cerebral palsy affects about one in every 345 children in the United States. Medical malpractice claims involving cerebral palsy may examine whether complications during pregnancy, labor, or delivery were properly identified and addressed.

JJS has handled cases where families alleged that preventable medical errors contributed to severe outcomes. These matters often require detailed examination of medical records, physician decisions, hospital procedures, and testimony from healthcare specialists. The firm’s medical malpractice division includes attorneys with experience in healthcare-related litigation, allowing it to handle cases where medical evidence plays a central role in determining liability.

One distinctive aspect of JJS’s structure is its attorneys with medical training. Partner Giles H. Manley holds both a medical degree and a law degree and is a board-certified OB-GYN. His background combines clinical knowledge with legal experience in medical malpractice and birth injury litigation. The firm has also kept registered nurses on staff, providing internal clinical knowledge to review the medical issues involved in litigation. This combination of legal and medical experience is uncommon among plaintiff litigation firms of similar size.

Among the firm’s notable medical malpractice matters was a District of Columbia cerebral palsy case that resulted in a $24 million jury verdict. The case involved a child who developed cerebral palsy following an undiagnosed airway obstruction. The verdict was reported as one of the larger medical malpractice verdicts in the Washington, D.C., area. The case reflected the type of litigation JJS handles, where families seek compensation in disputes involving alleged failures in medical care and long-term consequences for children.

Founder Howard Janet’s professional career has also shaped the firm’s medical malpractice work. Janet’s career, spanning almost five decades, focused mainly on litigation in medical malpractice, birth injury, and institutional abuse. He was honored with the title of Trial Lawyer of the Year by the Maryland Association for Justice in 2015. The Maryland State Bar Association honored him in a memorial statement in 2025 about his contribution to litigation of medical malpractice, especially birth injuries of children.

Beyond litigation, Janet established the Cerebral Palsy Family Network in 2010. The organization was created to provide medical, legal, and support resources for families of children with cerebral palsy. The network reflected Janet’s focus on issues affecting families involved in birth injury cases. However, it operated separately from the firm’s legal practice. The initiative became part of his broader involvement with the cerebral palsy community.

JJS has also received recognition through legal organizations and professional publications. Best Lawyers in America, Super Lawyers, and Rising Stars have recognized attorneys connected with the firm. Additional recognition has come through organizations such as the Maryland Association for Justice. These listings and awards have formed part of the professional record surrounding the firm and its attorneys, alongside reporting on significant litigation.

Independent coverage of medical malpractice matters involving JJS has appeared primarily through legal and regional reporting connected to major cases and professional developments. Publications such as The Baltimore Sun, The Baltimore Banner, and The Daily Record have covered matters involving the firm, including reporting on Howard Janet’s career and legal work. In addition to major litigation, the firm has also been mentioned in media reports related to medical malpractice and plaintiff litigation.

For many years, Janet, Janet & Suggs, LLC has handled medical malpractice cases involving severe injury, childbirth cases, and medical provider disputes. This illustrates the broader scope of plaintiff litigation and how a law firm approaches healthcare disputes.

Disclaimer: The content in this article is provided for general knowledge. It does not constitute legal advice, and readers should seek advice from qualified legal professionals regarding particular cases or situations.

How Madeline Crowne Carries Her History Into the Novel

Women's Journal Staff on September 14, 2026

By Her Own Hand Puts a Woman’s Survival at the Center of War

By: Samantha Borcy

There is a particular kind of writer who does not choose their subject so much as their subject chooses them, and John W. Deveny, who writes under the name Jack Deveny, is clearly that kind of writer. He describes himself as an empath who finds it easier to write from a woman’s point of view, someone who creates female protagonists because he is drawn to the specific kind of courage that women facing impossible circumstances tend to produce, the courage that does not announce itself with bravado but with the quiet, determined insistence on remaining fully human in a world that keeps trying to reduce you to what it has done to you. By Her Own Hand is the fullest expression yet of that creative instinct, and it is an emotionally ambitious war novel.

Madeline Crowne arrives in the novel with a history already behind her, having fled an abusive home by joining the army and transformed herself, through courage and competence and the specific discipline that military training demands, into someone capable of heroism in Afghanistan. That transformation is real and it matters, and Deveny honors it by refusing to reduce Madeline to her wounds even as he traces those wounds with considerable care. She is fierce and capable and burdened by guilt and fiercely protective of her younger brother John, and all of those dimensions coexist in the same person without any of them canceling the others out. When she is falsely accused of a war crime and becomes the target of a global manhunt, her response is not simply the response of a soldier in a crisis. It is the response of a complete human being confronting the specific intersection of her entire history with the specific catastrophe that has just been imposed on her.

What Mira and Eliot Lange Reveal About Trust After War

The relationship with Mira, the survivor of Lebanon’s civil wars who saves Madeline near death on an Afghan roadside and then refuses to let her go, is one of the novel’s most compelling and most carefully drawn elements. Their initial connection is genuine, built on the specific recognition that comes from two people who have survived different versions of the same essential experience, and Deveny renders that recognition with the emotional precision of someone who understands that the most dangerous relationships are rarely the ones that begin in obvious danger. The gradual revelation of Mira’s double life as an arms dealer, and the way her affection for Madeline curdles into possessiveness and manipulation, is handled with the patience of a writer who trusts his reader to inhabit moral complexity rather than retreat from it.

Eliot Lange, accused of desertion for trying to save a comrade, provides a different but complementary portrait of a person trying to rebuild a life from the ruins of war and institutional betrayal. His relationship with Madeline is rendered as a fragile and genuine attempt by two deeply damaged people to recover trust and tenderness in a world that has given them very little reason to trust that recovery is possible. The recurring imagery of hands throughout the novel, capable of violence but also of protection and care, reinforces the book’s central tension with a delicacy that reflects genuine craft.

What Makes By Her Own Hand Work as a War Novel

Deveny writes with emotional directness and a strong visual instinct, moving between the intimate and the propulsive with the ease of a novelist who has found the precise register for his material. He is generous toward even his most broken characters, and the ending, which favors emotional resolution over easy answers, brings the novel’s ideas about accountability and forgiveness and healing to a conclusion that feels earned rather than imposed. By Her Own Hand is an earnest, compassionate, and genuinely gripping novel about what war does to the people it shapes and what those people do with themselves afterward. It is exactly the kind of fiction that stays with you.

The novel follows Madeline Crowne through trauma, betrayal, and impossible choices without ever losing sight of the person underneath the soldier. By Her Own Hand by John W. Deveny is available on Amazon.