Issue #1 for the House Judiciary Committee: medical malpractice reform. The title of the hearing gives you some idea of the objectivity: “Medical Liability Reform — Cutting Costs, Spurring Investment, Creating Jobs.” The hearing came a day after the House of Representatives voted 245-189 to repeal the Affordable Care Act…
The Maryland General Assembly is open for business, which means a lot of lobbying on both sides of the aisle on medical malpractice related issues. Lobbyists for doctors and hospitals have been forever sounding the alarm of doctor shortages, relying primarily on their own studies to support this premise. Maybe…
For a variety of reasons, there is often a significant lag time between the time of death and the filing of a wrongful death lawsuit. For better and for worse, life goes on and the widow often remarries. So the question is, “Should a jury take this into consideration in…
The Maryland high court provides a good look at just how complicated the implications of joint tortfeasor releases can be in Hashmi v. Bennett, a medical malpractice case filed against Good Samaritan Hospital of Maryland and a number of other medical providers. Plaintiffs’ filed a medical malpractice survival action/wrongful death…
A lot of very smart people are looking at ways to decrease the incidence of medical malpractice in this country. The early returns are not good, according to a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The study found that efforts to decrease medical malpractice in our…
The Baltimore Sun wrote an article a few months back on hospital executive compensation that I did not see until today. No breaking news there: these guys make a ton of money. But it is interesting snooping around looking at non-profit health care providers’ salaries. Sometimes, hospitals will create a…
A hospital leaves a 4-inch-long piece of plastic tubing inside an infant boy at birth. The child may have a permanent injury. What should the verdict be? How much is that medical malpractice lawsuit worth? If a potential client called our law firm and asked that question, I would say…
Let’s take a sampling of people who answer yes to this question: “Are medical malpractice insurance rates for doctors in Maryland too high?” The follow-up question that 95% (source: my best guess) of them cannot answer is: “Exactly how much does malpractice insurance cost?” To say the least, it varies…
There has been a settlement in the St. Joseph’s stent case. No, not those cases. This settlement was for the not so unrelated lawsuit by the federal government for the kickbacks given for referrals from Mid-Atlantic Cardiovascular Associates. St. Joseph was accused of making payments to Mid-Atlantic for referrals for…
Good doctors commit malpractice less often than bad doctors. But sometimes, very meritorious medical malpractice lawsuits in Maryland are brought against very good doctors who made a very unfortunate mistake. In Florida last week, an appeals court affirmed a $2.15 million verdict that has ballooned to $4.3 million because the…