Big summer for the Maryland Court of Appeals in personal injury/medical malpractice appellate opinions. The latest in a recent spate of Maryland high court opinions, McQuitty v. Spangler, involves a tragic case of a boy who was born with severe cerebral palsy. Facts of this Birth Injury Case The plaintiff’s lawyer…
How many medical malpractice trials have there been in Washington D.C. this year? Ummm, let’s see, medical malpractice lawsuits are out of control. I know this because I read the Forbes article repeating the “malpractice lawsuits are running amok and medical malpractice lawyers are the problem” mantra. So how many…
The Washington Post has an article today about doctors who seek pledges from their patients not to complain on websites about the health care services they receive. Let’s set aside the obvious for a second that these agreements are very unlikely to be enforceable, either legally or practically. First, wouldn’t…
A hospital did not breach a duty of care as a matter of law to a police officer who suffered injuries while responding to a traffic accident allegedly caused by a just-released colonoscopy patient, Massachusetts’ highest court has ruled, affirming the trial court below. The police officer responded to an…
The Maryland Daily Record reports that a Frederick County jury awarded nearly $4 million to a boy in a birth injury malpractice lawsuit. The gist of the lawsuit was that the child’s cerebral palsy was caused by his doctors’ failure to properly monitor his heartbeat before delivery. The fetal heart…
University of Baltimore law professor Richard W. Bourne wrote an article published this year in the Arkansas Law Review articulating the theory that there should be an independent tort claim when a doctor destroys evidence or when a doctor fails to disclose to the patient that there has been a…
They wrote an opinion of interest to attorneys who receive referrals from other Maryland lawyers in malpractice cases. This case involves a Maryland lawyer who referred a cancer misdiagnosis case involving an allegedly misread mammogram to a lawyer that handles medical malpractice cases, agreeing to a fee split. Before referring…
Maryland’s nursing homes had an “off year” according to Jay Handcock’s blog for the Baltimore Sun. The Government Accountability Office reports that citations in Maryland for inflicting residents with “actual harm” or putting them in “immediate jeopardy” were given to 17% of Maryland’s 234 nursing homes last year. This is…
Last week, I wrote about the Baltimore Sun taking a position opposing medical malpractice caps, choosing the new, innovative path of sidestepping the substance of this issue, and trying to demonize trial lawyers. The Baltimore Sun responded Sunday by printing a letter to the editor offering the opposing view on…
The Daily Herald in Chicago published an editorial yesterday that urges the Illinois Supreme Court to overturn the Illinois cap on non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases. The article, written by the President on the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association (I guess they have not gotten the Association for Justice memo),…