Lawsuit Information CenterA medical malpractice lawsuit on behalf of a Florida veteran will begin this week against the Miami Veterans’ Administration hospital. In the lawsuit, the plaintiff claims he contracted hepatitis C from an unclean medical device used in a 2007 colonoscopy. This may be the bellwether trial on this issue: there are a dozen similar lawsuits that have been filed in Florida and more have been filed in Tennessee. (Certainly, Tennessee – even with their new malpractice restrictions – is a more hospitable place than Florida for medical malpractice lawsuits.)
Articles Posted in Medical Malpractice
Doctors and Malpractice: The Human Toll on Doctors
American Medical News writes an article about an important topic: how doctors emotionally deal with malpractice lawsuits. Let’s be honest, medical malpractice lawyers on both sides of the “v” largely ignore this issue.
Mississippi High Court on Experts and Collateral Sources
The Mississippi Supreme Court reversed a directed verdict for a hospital in a nursing medical malpractice action in which the plaintiff suffered IV infiltration – leakage of fluid from an IV into the patient’s tissues from an IV line – and burn injuries.
The directed verdict from the trial court struck Plaintiffs’ expert from testifying as to the standard of care even though the expert had already been accepted as an expert on the nursing care given by the hospital. Had the expert been permitted to testify, she would have testified as to the standard of care for IV infiltrations and that the hospital breached that standard.
The Mississippi high court also make a good call for plaintiffs on the question of the collateral source set off when the amount of the liens/bills have been reduced.
Certificate of Merit Requirements in Malpractice Cases
The Minnesota Court of Appeals decided an interesting medical malpractice case addressing the bar plaintiffs’ malpractice lawyers must clear when presenting a certificate of merit that will survive summary judgment.
Malpractice Premiums and Caps
There has been a 61% decrease in medical malpractice insurance payouts in Pennsylvania over the last 7 years, according to Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell.
According to the governor, this has led to an 18% decrease in malpractice premiums. I’m trying to figure out why a 61% drop in payouts leads to an 18% decrease in premiums. Where is all the money going? In any event, we still have a doctor shortage in much of Pennsylvania.
Why aren’t doctors fleeing to Pennsylvania? If they are not going to Pennsylvania, where do they go? The top 5 highest paying jobs in the United States are doctors? Are they quitting medicine and becoming real estate agents? Have you ever met a doctor that just stopped practicing medicine and took up something else?
Unnecessary Heart Stents
If you Google “unnecessary heart stents” most of the searches come up discussing the stent debacle at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Maryland. But Maryland might just be the tipping point. The same health care system with the same financial incentives for doctors for using heart stents exists throughout the country. I suspect unnecessary stent medical malpractice lawsuits will be the next wave of malpractice lawsuits. In many jurisdictions, although I suspect not in Maryland when all is said and done, there will be a great case for punitive damages.
Stent lawsuits in jurisdictions with punitive damages involving a hospital systematically providing unnecessary heart stents may be big cases. Punitive damage claims against individual doctors are typically of limited utility because the doctors have limited assets – relatively speaking – and the insurance policies do not cover intentional torts. Obviously, hospitals have more insurance and deeper pockets.
Pennsylvania Malpractice Lawsuits
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.
Five Common Malpractice Lawsuits
Medical malpractice can happen in almost any medical context because there is often a lot at stake in treating a patient. There are grave consequences to many physician errors. Doctors can prescribe the wrong medication for a relatively insignificant illness and cause life-altering or fatal consequences. In fairness, there are few professions where the consequences of errors are so meaningful. Most jobs are far more forgiving of mistakes. But many mistakes on the human body cannot be easily undone.
Still, there are several common types of inquiries medical malpractice lawyers repeatedly get from clients:
Breast Cancer: Failure to diagnose breast cancer is a common malpractice claim. Often, a missed breast cancer diagnosis claim is against a radiologist who misreads a mammogram. While it is true that good doctors can make mistakes, the reality is there are a minority of radiologists who are not very good at reading a mammogram and fail to see the severity of the breast lump is ignored as benign or underestimated.
7 Common Malpractice Lawsuits
Medical malpractice can happen in almost any medical context because there is often a lot at stake in treating a patient. There are grave consequences to many physician errors. Doctors can prescribe the wrong medication for a relatively insignificant illness and cause life altering or fatal consequences. In fairness, there are few professions where the consequences of errors are so meaningful. Most jobs are far more forgiving of mistakes. But many mistakes on the human body cannot be easily undone.
Still, there are several common types of inquiries medical malpractice lawyers repeatedly get from clients:
Breast Cancer
$110 Transfer from Medical Malpractice Fund
The New Hampshire Insurance Commissioner defends a $110 million transfer from New Hampshire’s Medical Malpractice Joint Underwriting Association in the Nashua Telegraph. The Commissioner is a defendant in a lawsuit filed by three health care providers regarding this $110 million transfer.