With the advent of better patient monitoring facilities and advancement of knowledge in maintaining vital parameters till near normal, emergency child care is a significant advance in field of pediatrics. This has ushered in new era of critical care and emergency treatment in pediatrics. A number of tertiary care centers in the form of intensive premature, neonate and child care units, with huge investment in infrastructure have come up. State of art infrastructure costs a fortune and escalates cost of quality care in pediatric treatment. Enactment of Consumer Protection Act along with inclusion of medical professionals in its ambit has put cases of alleged medical negligence in fast tract of judicial remedy. Heavy cost of emergency and critical care treatment has made this emerging pediatric subspecialty, a hotspot of litigations. In today\'s scenario, doctors are health risk managers of their critically ill patients, who need vigilant monitoring and timely treatment to avert further crisis and complications that are common and foreseeable. Any action or inaction of doctor in emergency room that accelerates or increases the health risk may result in allegation of breach of duty of doctor. Courts take lenient view regarding making errors in diagnosis. This is because so many diseases present to doctor with common symptom and sign complexes and doctors may make an error of judgment, if the disease presents with rare, atypical signs and symptoms. Doctor has liberty to choose treatment after arriving at tentative diagnosis. Courts take very strict view, if there is deficiency in procedure or conduct of a treatment. If a health damage or hazard occurs due to such breach of duty of doctor in emergency room then he may have to defend himself from the charges of medical negligence incourt. Since treatment costs are high and results of treatment of critically ill may sometimes result in some sort of disability or even death so compensations asked by patient litigant are astronomical.  

Key words: Emergency room care; Medical negligence; Duty of care in emergency; Critical care, Omission of duty; Death; Disability.