The Nebraska Supreme Court has ruled that plaintiffs could not argue that a surgeon should have disclosed his displinary history unless there was proof that the standard of care required disclosure. The Court held that plaintiffs “never established that the standard of care required such disclosures. Rather, they ask us…
Steven and I have been having a discussion – it started here. Here is his latest missive: “My mistake, I did not mean to state that this particular lawyer(s) was sleazy, but that the trial bar in general is sleazy. I will admit that there must be some decent trial…
The Arizona Court of Appeals has ruled that the amounts of settlements made by doctor in other cases are not discoverable in another medical malpractice action against him. The case is Miller v. Kelly; it is reported at 130 P.3d 982 (Ariz. App. 2006). The Court held that “the amount…
Go to the Tennessee Medical Malpractice Law Blog for a post on wrong site surgeries.
Teresa Sigmon, attorney for the defendant in a medical malpractice case, allegedly pressured one of the plaintiff’s consulting experts in the case into withdrawing from an agreement to testify for the plaintiff. The plaintiff then sued her, her law firm, and the the medical malpractice insurer for “abuse of process,…
It is getting worse. A study of patients in our Medicare population has found an alarming number of incidents and deaths. The study looked discharge records of Medicare patients and used 16 of “20 indicators for potentially preventable patient safety incidents that could be readily identified in hospital discharge data.…
The Washington Post tells us that hospital-acquired infections cost more than $600M per year – and that is just in Pennsylvania! An excerpt from the article: “Doctors, nurses and patients’ relatives have long known the risks of contracting an infection while in a hospital. But there has been little quantifiable…
John Ritter died of an aortic aneurysm in 2003. His family filed a medical malpractice lawsuit against various health care providers. It now appears that the case has been settled. I met John Ritter in New York 5 or 6 years ago. I went to a play and at the…
This op-ed piece from today’s New York Times is so good it needs to be repeated in full in this blog. The Doctor Will See You for Exactly Seven Minutes By PETER SALGO WHEN politicians speak of America’s health care needs, they often miss an important point: the doctor-patient relationship…
The locality rule in medical malpractice cases is absolutely ridiculous. It is designed to create an artifical barrier to recovery, to protect doctors and hospitals, particularly those in rural areas, from malpractice suits. It pretends that there is a difference in the standard of care given the size of the…