Four Massachusetts doctors are asking that a wrongful death lawsuit against them be dismissed because the claim should be handled as a medical malpractice claim. The family of a man who killed in a motor vehicle accident claims these doctors failed to warn the at-fault drive that her medication may…
The Volokh Conspiracy has a blog post from David Hyman discussing the logic behind caps on non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases. Apparently, a Harvard Law School student writing a paper on caps asked the principal legislative sponsor of California’s (Draconian) medical malpractice cap why they settled on $250,000. This…
The Illinois Supreme Court heard oral arguments yesterday from malpractice lawyers in three cases challenging the Illinois limit on caps in medical malpractice cases. Earlier this year, a trial court ruled that the law violates the separation clause of the Constitution. The Maryland Court of Appeals is also expected to…
Hospital infections are becoming more of an issue both within hospitals and in the media in recent years. The Center for Disease Control in Atlanta makes clear the reason: infections at hospitals cause 90,000 deaths in the U.S. every year. Infections result in an estimated 205,000 additional hospital days for…
If you are interested in taking a honest look at the medical malpractice problem in Maryland and around the country, Philip G. Peters, Jr’ s 2007 Michigan Law Review Article “Doctors and Juries” is a must read. The article concludes with this: In recap, the data demonstrate that juries treat…
A recent Jury Verdict Research study looking at cancer injuries involving negligence found that the average compensatory award is $4,147,526 (median is $2,052,500). Most of these cancer cases involve medical malpractice lawsuits for the failure to diagnose cancer. One medical malpractice study found that 12% of the time, cancer is…
Medical malpractice costs comprise less than 1 of overall health costs. In 2002, medical related costs rose almost 10% to $1.5 trillion. Yet malpractice premiums expenditures were only $9.6 billion – making malpractice costs about .64 percent of national health care expenditures. First, I grant you, this is old data.…
A Sand Diego jury has awarded $3.7 million to a man who sued a doctor for failing to diagnose the iron-overload disease hemochromatosis. Plaintiff went to his workers’ compensation doctor who found increased ferritin in his blood, an indication of hemochromatosis. No diagnosis was made. Three years later, they were…
This CNN.com article is a little old, but it is an interesting story of one doctor’s struggle to find a medical malpractice lawyer to bring a medical malpractice lawsuit against her doctor. No one talks about this tragedy: victims who cannot bring a malpractice lawsuit only because the economics of…
Our law firm generally avoids dental malpractice claims because the injuries – while often incredibly significant to the patient – rarely involve the kind of permanent injuries that are required for a malpractice case. Interestingly, I stumbled across data that showed that there were 766 dental malpractice payments made in…