claiming damages for a 'cut' on my new born child during delivery against a reputable hospital..

It was on June 16, 2011 at 1:18am when my wife gave birth to our first child. After more than 12hrs of labor at the hospital, her doctors decided to take her on cesarean delivery at the surgical room. But, unfortunately, when I saw newly born child there was a half-inch cut on her left cheek. And nobody can explain it to us clearly how it happened and who did it. Sadly, my child is a girl and it may affect her badly physically or even emotionally in the future. We paid almost 50k less 16k because of my philhealth benefits at the hospital.
We've already brought this concern to the hospital's president on July 12, 2011 and we were advised to file a formal complain addressed to their office.
We will be filing the formal complain with the pictures attached to it on Monday, July 18, 2011 and we are demanding damages claims and full refund of what we have paid, also for the assurance that they will shoulder everything when an infection and/or complications may occur in the future.
Our questions are..Are the demands enough for us to claim? How much figure can we demand against them? Should we proceed with the formal complain first before anything else? We need advice please.. many thanks!

IMO, you can request for damages, but not a refund. i recommend you get advice from a pediatric dermatologist so that you can know how bad or how light the extent of the injury will be.

if your claim is less than 100k, you can take advantage of a small claims case. rules on sc.judiciary.gov.ph.

Can we sue the doctors as well as the hospital itself? I believe the doctors' professional licenses will be at risk as we bring this incident at the PRC.. What possible cases can we sue them? Can we demand thrice the amount of what we have paid them once they'll settle with us??

yes, you can include the doctors, but to go after their license, you'll have to file a separate case at the prc. you can ask for as much as you want, the immediate effect is it will increase the filing fees. whether it will be granted depends on the evidence.

Do we need to formally file a case first before we can get through the settlement?? The hospital's president have already replied to our complain. They are willing to provide us with any reasonable assistance anytime to address our child's facial injury. But aside from that we want damages claims. We have on our hand pictures taken from the surgery room showing the cut on our child's face. And we believe it's a strong evidence against them. We would like to ask from them a cash amount of P250,000 as our claim for the damages. How much will be the filing fees? And what are the procedures in filing the case?