A Salisbury cardiologist has been indicted in federal court on charges stemming from the doctor’s giving patients unnecessary stents. Many patients have already filed civil lawsuits in Salisbury claiming medical malpractice for the unnecessary stents.
The debacle at St. Joe’s has caused a fresh look into every doctor who has been putting in stents by the bushel load. What we are seeing in many cases is not a pretty picture.
This month’s Metro Verdicts Monthly provides the median verdict/settlement in Maryland wrongful death cases for victims over the age of 65 is $600,000.
I always caution about misleading figures, but this number is beyond misleading (through no fault of MVM). The data measures Maryland wrongful death settlements and verdicts in the last 23 years and ostensibly includes only cases of which Metro Verdicts Monthly is aware and, with respect to wrongful death settlements, it is not just medical malpractice cases and many wrongful death settlements in car accident cases are purely a function of the insurance policies available (sometimes in malpractice cases, too, but much less frequently).
Also, keep in mind this data includes settlements, which apparently reduce the numbers significantly. In another MVM study, juries have over the last 22 years awarded a median award of $1,337,824 involving victims over the age of 65 in Maryland wrongful death cases.
I wrote last week about the re-trial of a medical malpractice case in Illinois that discussed the issue of juror misconduct. You can find the article on the verdict here.
After that post, the jury reached a defense verdict after about two hours of deliberation.
It is hard to win a case you have already lost on juror misconduct because unless the lawyers dramatically alter their strategy, a pretty good “focus group” has already given their opinion on the case.
The Madison St. Clair Record has an article on a medical malpractice case that is in its sixth day of the second time trying the case. The case alleges failure to diagnose skin cancer.
Interestingly, the first case ended in a mistrial after a defense verdict when it was discovered that a juror lied about his role in two pending personal injury lawsuits. Usually, when the issue of jury honesty in voir dire is raised, it is almost invariably the defendant after a plaintiff’s verdict.
The article also provides some highlights from this medical malpractice trial including this one: “So, you think there are some situations where the doctor can play Russian roulette with the revolver?” As you can imagine, this one drew an objection.
This is a sample Maryland medical malpractice lawsuit. The links on the right of the document provide other examples of motions, pleadings and discovery in Maryland medical malpractice lawsuits.
We provide a lot of medical malpractice samples on our website for the Maryland malpractice lawyer who wants to see how another lawyer approaches the workup of a malpractice claim. If you have no experience and understanding of how to handle a malpractice claim, I think you are inviting a different kind of malpractice claim – legal malpractice – if you try to handle the case on your own without an experienced malpractice lawyer.
A Florida appeals court gave an interesting ruling in Kristensen-Kepler v. Cooney on the question of whether there was potential liability against an ambulatory surgical center.
Plaintiff’s wrongful death claim was that the ambulatory surgical center’s anesthesiologist negligently caused an infection in decedent’s spine. The court found that the surgery center was not directly the patient’s injuries and death because the patient did not choose the surgical center as the site of his surgery. Instead, the patient chose the doctor who directed the patient to the surgical center.
You can read the full opinion here.
The Maryland Daily Record has an article today on a defense verdict in a claim against Upper Chesapeake Medical Center in Hartford County. The claim was not against a doctor but the nursing staff.
From reading the article, it sounds like a tough case in a difficult jurisdiction.
I had the pleasure today to compute post judgment interest in a case we won at trial and on appeal. Maryland’s post-judgment interest rate is 10%. Unfortunately, the interest does not compound so the real rate of interest declines over time. In fairness to parties that win at trial only to have the case unnecessarily delayed by endless appeals, it would make sense to increase the post-judgment interest rate over time. Of course, the changes this gains momentum in the Maryland legislature is the same as LeBron James selecting the University of Maryland tonight.
The median medical malpractice jury award in Maryland, according to Jury Verdict Research, was $500,000 in 2003, the last year for which I could find data. Verdicts that year ranged from $54,521 to $7,708,064. One study indicates that the average award in Maryland malpractice claims (presumably claims that are reported to the national data bank) is $319,977, which is about what I would have predicted.
Studies in other jurisdictions give interesting data on median verdicts in other states: Florida – $1,257,386; Ohio – $850,000; New York – $1,100,000; Pennsylvania – $1,000,000; Texas – $880,000 (average, not median which makes a big difference) Indiana – $750,000; Missouri – $694,000; West Virginia – $1,100,000 (average) North Carolina – $500,000.
Keep in mind, these comparisons are out of context. The publication dates, in particular, vary wildly for the states I picked, and the methodology probably varies but I still think this provides an interesting means of comparison for medical malpractice lawyers.
A recent Jury Verdict Research study looking at jury verdicts found that the average wrongful death verdict for men is $4,132,576 and the median is $1,400,000. The average wrongful death verdict for women is $3,158,223, and the median is $1,200,000.
It is tempting to look at these numbers and provide an easy answer to the discrepancy: men make more than women. But the average wrongful death verdict for a male minor is $4,300,663 (median is $2,000,000) and the average verdict for female minors is 3,438,080 ($1,500,000 median). So it seems pretty clear that, for whatever reason, jurors place a higher value on wrongful death cases involving men and boys than women and girls.
Medical malpractice verdicts made up 36% of the verdicts in this study. Of course, this does not count settlements in wrongful death cases nor does it count defense verdicts. Certainly, when you are factoring in the settlement value of a medical malpractice case, you also need to consider Maryland’s cap on noneconomic damages because in most Maryland medical malpractice lawsuits, the cap on damages is not going to give the victim’s family much more than $1.5 million unless the economic damages (medical bills and/or past and future lost wages) are significant.
