The family of a University of North Florida professor who died during a CT scan was was awarded $6.2 million in his medical malpractice wrongful death case.
It is pretty incredible how vitriolic the comments are from readers of this story on the case.
The Maryland Medical Malpractice Blog reports on a successful medical malpractice suit in Rhode Island.
Five New York hospitals are participating in a pilot program to cut medical malpractice lawsuits and costs by, among other things, revealing medical mistakes early and offering quick settlements in cases where it appears there was malpractice.
Believe it or not, I don't have an opinion. I think under this paradigm more cases are going to settle but the average malpractice settlement in these cases will be less than the statistics now show. Is it worth it to get less but get it over with and be able to move on with your life? It depends on how much less.
One other interesting tidbit from one of the articles in this program: There are 900 pending medical malpractice cases in New York. That is a lot of cases but, then again, New York is a big state.
A Florida appeals court ruled against the Plaintiff in a claim against a surgical center. The crux of the opinion: whether the patient chose the surgery center is going to be the key to whether a wrongful death claim against the a surgery center will survive.
A Frederick County (Virginia, not Maryland) jury awarded a woman $3 million against a doctor who performed a hysterectomy. After a reduction for the cap, the woman's recovery will be $1,925,000.
Plainitff's malpractice case was that the doctor used tissue from the rectal wall to repair the woman's vaginal cuff during the hysterctomy rather than peritoneal material. Post trial motions for remittur were rejected.
James A. Goodyear, president of the Pennsylvania Medical Society, says that because Pennsylvania doctors win a defense verdict in 85 percent of malpractice lawsuits that go to trial, it may be that "too many claims are advancing that shouldn't."
Alternative view: good malpractice lawsuits settle before trial.
The Michigan Supreme Court was asked to determine last week whether a plaintiff satisfied the notice of intent requirement under Michigan law when her malpractice lawyers mailed the notice of intent to file a claim to the doctor's prior address. The doctor did not receive the notice until after the deadline.
The Michigan high court decided to elevate form over substance, concluding that plaintiff satisfied the mandates of MCL 600.2912b(2) because the statute states that proof of mailing constitutes prima facie evidence of compliance with Michigan law.
You can read the full opinion here.
MAG Mutual Insurance provides malpractice insurance to most Georgia doctors and others in the southeast. MAG Mutual Insurance Company is the tenth largest medical professional liability insurer in the United States.
In spite of its continued claims of a medical malpractice lawsuit crisis, MAG Mutual recently approved a dividend distribution its doctor-policyholders. MAG Mutual's website brags that for the fourth year in a row, and the twelve of the last sixteen years, MAG Mutual has provided a dividend check for its doctors.
Albany Medical Center Hospital settled a malpractice lawsuit involving the death of a woman following the birth of her daughter for $5.2 million.
Plaintiffs' lawsuit alleged that while the woman was delivering her child by Caesarian, the surgeon damaged her uterine arteries which caused severe hemorrhaging that lead to her death. Other doctors repeated suggested follow-up surgery to repair the damage but the surgeon refused for more than six hours.
The $5.2 million dollar settlement included terms that speak well of the hospital and the Plaintiffs, including an agreement that the hospital fund an annual maternal safety lecture series in honor of the victim and requires the hospital take other preventative measures - both training and technological - to make sure this does not happen again.
One difficult issue medical malpractice lawyers in Pennsylvania, and all over the country, have is finding medical experts willing to testify against another doctor who has negligently injured a patient. The doctor has to be: (1) real world qualified, someone who the lawyer believes can speak to the issue authoritatively; (2) qualified in the eyes of the court; and (3) have the ability to effectively communicate all of this to a jury.
A Pennsylvania Superior Court found that in a recent opinion that plaintiff's malpractice lawyers did not meet the second prong of the test in a case involving a man who suffered a severe hematoma that formed outside an arterial wall of his brachial artery. After surgery to repair the condition, he lost the strength in his grip, and suffered nerve damage. The ER doctors are named in the malpractice lawsuit because the patient kept calling and returning to the ER but did not get appropriate follow-up care.
Plaintiff's malpractice lawyer submitted a certificate of merit from a neurologist and surgeon at Allegheny University Hospital and Temple University Hospital. But the court found that while the expert was a qualified neurosurgeon, he had insufficient training to testify about emergency room procedures.
Tough loss for Plaintiff.
According Public Citizen, a nonprofit watchdog group, medical malpractice lawsuit related costs continue to decline. This is bad news for those who continue to try to include malpractice reform into the "Soon to be passed, no really, I'm serious this time" health care bill. The report, titled Medical Malpractice Payments Fall Again in 2009, shows the downward trend in malpractice payouts. According to Public Citizen:
Public Citizen also dropped another bombshell that, if true, is just stunning. It said that the hospital rating company HealthGrades estimated in 2004 that more than 190,000 deaths in the United States are caused by medical errors. This doubled the famous IOM study's finding of 99,000 deaths in 1999.
There were 3,537 payments made in medical malpractice wrongful death cases in 2009. This tells us that the problem is not malpractice lawsuits but medical errors. The real way to continue to decrease the costs associated with medical malpractice is get rid of bad doctors, support the good ones (which is the vast majority), and find ways to find new ways to decrease the incidence of medical errors.
A woman who filed a medical malpractice lawsuit after surgery for a broken leg left her partially paralyzed was awarded $19.2 million last Friday in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The jury also awarded a $3 million verdict for her husband.
The verdict was against a surgeon, an anesthesiologist, a nurse anesthetist and Cumberland Healthcare Group, a group of 18 medical providers practicing in family medicine, pediatrics, anesthesiology, and orthopedic surgery.
Peter Orszag, Director of the Office of Management & Budget, in a Q&A with Business Week:
Q: One of the things Republicans always say is, why doesn't the White House want to make a deal about tort law? The President says he's open to every idea, so why is it a big thing to say "I'm open to medical malpractice reform"?A: I guess I'd push back and say, if that's the deciding issue, then let's see a comprehensive plan that says, with this additional piece, we now sign on.
Thankfully, he falls short of saying what "reform" means. Is he talking about caps (ridiculous), requiring certificates of merit in every state (arguably not unreasonable), or using Comparative Effectiveness Research guidelines to create presumptions (a bad idea but I get the argument).
The Washington Law Blog has a good post on the big winner when there are issue being raised about raising, instituting, or abolishing malpractice caps: campaign coffers.
President Obama continues to put out feelers that he might consider making real concessions to Republicans on medical malpractice reform/caps in exchange for a health care bill.
What does this all mean in general and to Maryland malpractice lawyers and their clients? First, I think President Obama is trying to offer Republicans just enough to flip one or two GOP senators which means, if anything, he will propose a bill that he thinks will be opposed by medical malpractice lawyers but not enough to set them off into the stratosphere. In Maryland, we already have a significant cap on noneconomic damages in malpractice cases. So I suspect this thinking is he will support either reform measures that fall short of caps, perhaps requiring certificate of merits in every state before the filing of a lawsuit, or a national malpractice cap that is higher than many states, including Maryland, already have on noneconomic damages. My guess if he agrees to a cap: $950,000 on noneconomic damages.
If this turns out to be the case and this is what comes out of a health care reform bill, there will be no immediate practical effect on Maryland medical malpractice cases because we already have a cap and we already require a certificate of merit. But it would still be an awful blow for victims everywhere, including Maryland, because once you open the floodgates and allow the federal government to enter into what is clearly an issue that historically has been reserved to the states (and the judiciary for that matter), it is going to be open season on civil lawsuits. This is why Republicans will accept a relatively weak malpractice reform bill - to get their foot in the door. So in Maryland, malpractice reform might simultaneously have no immediate impact and still be a disaster for malpractice victims all at the same time.
The Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog writes about a defense verdict in a medical malpractice lawsuit in Baltimore.
Day on Torts breaks down just how little emergency room doctors spend on malpractice insurance.
Pioneer Local (Chicago) has an editorial from Dan Kotin on the new Illinois Supreme Court decision that caps on damages in medical malpractice lawsuits violates the Illinois Constitution's separation of powers. He makes an interesting point that sounds from one angle like a classic Tea Party ideology:
That means a jury of 12 citizens should decide what is proper compensation for another citizen, not politicians sitting in Springfield.
Take the power away from the politicians and give it to the people. This is classic fare from the right wing. It seems to me this is the best way to explain the problem with malpractice caps to people who are on the fence.
Instead of jury trial in criminal cases, let's have a panel of five real experts evaluate criminal cases. Let's say a retired judge, two police officers and, ummm, two victims. That would be fair. I think that is what the framers of the Constitution had in mind.
Similar logic is suggested here to deal with medical malpractice cases.
Actually, if you reverse the paradigm, maybe the better analogy is putting two criminals on the panel. If doctors need to be involved in the process of judging doctors, don't we need criminals to evaluate criminals. Do non-criminals - people who have never committed so much as a felony.- deserve to judge criminals. But why stop with doctors and criminals? Should the "only we judge us" rule to lawyers, plumbers, farmers and Indian chiefs. I'm guessing only doctors have earned this special privilege, this end run around the law the rest of us have been following for the last 400 years.
Illinois Supreme Court struck down their $500,000.00 cap on non-economic damages. I'll be writing more about Lebron v. Gottlieb Memorial Hospital tomorrow. But this is a big win for Plaintiffs.
