One of the hardest decisions an accident lawyer has to make is whether to take a case with fatal or catastrophic injuries where there is a significant dispute in liability – typically he said/she said. Nothing you read in this blog post will make that decision for you. In these…
While not as fun as, say, baseball statistics in the pre-steroids era, I really enjoy looking at statistics on personal injury lawsuits. The Department of Justice just released a new report on personal injury lawsuit statistics (which I found via TortsProfBlog). The data, as always with this stuff, is older…
In response to a call from one doctor for medical malpractice reform in Montana, Thomas C. Bulma, a Missoula lawyer, points out the following facts: Only one Montana dentist has been the subject of a lawsuit in Montana in the past 10 years. The dentist prevailed. Only one podiatrist was…
Michigan Lawyers Weekly published an article titled “Populist juries side with plaintiffs.” (No web link available.) This title got my attention because I have been speculating about the impact our economic troubles are having on jury verdicts. The thesis of the article appears to be that juries are more likely…
Lawyers handling wrongful death cases encounter an awful argument from defense lawyers in cases where the victim is 65 years-old and older: you have to discount the value of your claim because the victim was old, anyway. The argument is so callous no lawyer would directly make this argument to…
In wrongful death cases, the size of jury verdicts has always tilted in favor of men, which is why many argued that caps on non-economic damages are sexually discriminatory. In a recent study, Jury Verdict Research offers a different conclusion when comparing compensation in wrongful death claims between minor females…
October’s Chicago Lawyer contains excerpts from an interview with John L. Kirkton, the editor of the Jury Verdict Reporter for the last 17 years. One great myth debunked by Mr. Kirkton is the theory that jurors give more around Christmas. Lawyers are always looking to schedule trials around Christmas and…
Interesting data from Jury Verdict Research on the median and average values of wrongful death cases where the decedent is female. The overall average compensatory award for wrongful death of an adult female over the last eight years in the United States is $2,990,032 ($1,102,976 is the median). Age is…
There is an article in the New York Times today that concludes that it is best to settle most accident, malpractice, and breach of contract claims based on a recent study. The basis for the conclusion is a study suggesting that defendants made the wrong decision by proceeding to trial,…
While I was on vacation, I promised more commentary on Matsuyama v. Birnbaum, a landmark medical malpractice opinion on loss of chance from the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. In Matsuyama, the 42-year-old Plaintiff’s decedent, Mr. Matsuyama, saw the Defendant doctor, a board-certified internist, and his primary care doctor, for a…