Medical Justice is what appears to be a new organization whose aims are to “‘prevent, deter and respond’ to frivolous malpractice lawsuits.”
This seems like a goal we—including good plaintiffs’ medical malpractice lawyers—can agree on, right? Frivolous lawsuits hurt everyone. For a cost of $625 to $1990 a year, Medical Justice will give you:
•Pursuit of counterclaims against expert witnesses in their professional societies and state licensing boards
Medical malpractice lawyers in New York today released incredible surveillance camera video from Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn, New York, showing a 49-year-old woman dying on the floor of a psychiatric emergency room while being completely ignored by the hospital staff.
The video shows the woman keeling over and falling out of a chair on June 19, 2008, and lying facedown on the floor, then thrashing wildly before going limp. A full hour passes before anyone bothered to help.
An incredible video that reminds me of the Rodney King incident. If it was not on video, no one would ever believe that it happened as the plaintiffs’ lawyers will argue.
Medical malpractice victims suffered a setback in Kentucky last week when the Supreme Court of Kentucky reversed the Kentucky Court of Appeals ruling adopting the “lost or diminished chance of recovery” in medical malpractice cases in Kemper v. Gordon. (This defense verdict was, however, reversed on other grounds because the trial court erred in excluding evidence that an expert has reached the opposite conclusion in another case.)
The facts of Kemper are tragic. A 38-year-old mother in otherwise good health presented at the emergency room with chest pain, shortness of breath, severe nausea, and dizziness. For a year, these and related symptoms appeared. The court dismissed all as anxiety or panic attacks. Finally, the woman was diagnosed with metastasized gastric (stomach) cancer. After her death, her family brought a medical malpractice lawsuit. At various points along the way to the jury, she settled with five of the six doctors that treated her. The jury returned a defense verdict.
The University of Chicago Journal of Legal Studies published an interesting article on medical malpractice tort reform. Current Research on Medical Malpractice Liability: Medical Malpractice Reform and Physicians in High-Risk Specialties, 36 J. Legal Stud. 121 (2007). The article supports the plaintiff’s view of medical malpractice tort reform… with a very notable exception.
The article concludes that introducing medical malpractice reform in response to the fear of losing doctors may be misguided because the “relationship between medical malpractice reform and physician labor supply suggest that the effects are modest.” The article suggests that many doctors are likely to be indifferent to medical malpractice reform “because their likelihood of being sued is low.”
Interestingly, the article references one study by Eric Helland and Mark Showalter titled, “The Impact of Liability on the Physician Labor Market,” which showed that medical malpractice damage caps induce physicians to work more hours in a year.
The Maryland Daily Record reports today that The Law Offices of Peter G. Angelos intends to file an appeal in a Baltimore City medical malpractice case in which the Plaintiff’s $10.2 million jury verdict against University of Maryland Medical Center was capped at $632,500.00 because that is the limit on non-economic damages.
The Daily Record reports that the Plaintiff’s counsel intends to argue that: (1) the limitation on damages has not accomplished its purported legislative aim of reducing medical malpractice insurance rates for doctors; (2) the Maryland cap on non-economic damages is pre-empted by the ADA; (3) that it violates equal protection and due process; and (4) that it deprives the jury of the information necessary to make an informed decision.
Baltimore City Circuit Judge Carol E. Smith denied Plaintiff’s motion to overturn the cap and reduced the Plaintiff’s verdict to his medical expenses and $620,000.00 in non-economic damages (the malpractice must have occurred between October 2002 and September 2003).
I read over the weekend an interesting decision from the Connecticut Supreme Court that came out last week. The case, Monti v. Wenkert, is an awful medical malpractice case involving a seventeen-year-old girl who presented with significant but subjective symptomology that her GP, physician’s assistant, and the hospital’s emergency room staff dismissed as psychological.
This diagnosis continued even after she collapsed at her doctor’s office with “blueish, purple” lips. The teenage girl died of acute respiratory distress syndrome caused by a viral infection. Like I said: awful. I don’t suspect this case will show up on the cover of Tort Reform Monthly soon. It is anyone’s guess how this case made it to a verdict.
At trial, after the close of Plaintiffs’ case, Plaintiff and one defendant agreed to a high-low agreement not disclosed to the other Defendant. After an adverse verdict, the Defendant kept in the dark appealed his case.
I wrote recently about what I thought was the primary fuel to the tort reform engine: people do not expect to be the victims of an accident that results from the negligence of someone else, and they do not expect to be victims of malpractice. Statistically, they are right.
The odds were in favor of a West Virginia gynecologist when he went in for abdominal surgery last month. But after his surgery, the gynecologist developed an infection and developed severe and debilitating abdominal pain, decreased consciousness, and overwhelming septic shock, requiring mechanical ventilation and additional surgeries. The gynecologist sued his doctors and the hospital for medical malpractice, attributing his injuries to negligence.
Flashback to April 7, 2008, the day before the doctor’s surgery: What would have the doctor said about caps on medical malpractice cases on that day? What would he have said about whether litigation is the answer? Obviously, in this case, he thought litigation was the only answer, filing suit an almost unheard of one month after the alleged negligence.
On Wednesday, a Baltimore City jury awarded a 78-year-old Owings Mills woman $2 million in a medical malpractice case stemming from a failed surgery that led to three successive leg amputations.
After the verdict, Defendant’s lawyer gave this quote to the Maryland Daily Record: “This reaffirms my long held view that it is extremely difficult for a physician to get a fair trial in Baltimore City, particularly where there is a bad outcome and a sympathetic Plaintiff.”
If I were the reporter, I would have asked a few follow-up questions. Do you think the people of Baltimore are not as smart and more prone to emotion then, let’s say, a Baltimore County jury? Why do you think this is? Is it just malpractice cases we cannot trust them with, or all cases? What should we do about this problem with Baltimore City jurors? Should we replace Baltimore City jurors with the right people, like the good folks in, let’s say, Potomac. If Baltimore City jurors can’t be fair on juries, should we continue to trust them to vote?
The Maryland Injury Law Center received today the following comment from an emergency room doctor in southern Maryland regarding my blog post on the alleged shortage of doctors in Maryland:
“You are guilty of not supporting your assumptions with data as well. I practice emergency medicine in St. Mary’s County and Southern Maryland DOES have a doctor shortage problem. I know, I work here. I have many patients that cannot get into a primary care physician or a specialist. Talk to any hospital CEO at Civista, St. Marys, or Calvert Hospital and they will all tell you the same thing. While the shortage may not be evenly distributed about the state, the shortage is real and affects real people. You mentioned that you do not know anyone that has not been able to see a doctor. I imagine that in your nice neighborhood, your friends from the club, your colleagues have all been able to find doctors. You are out of touch with the rest of Maryland. If you are waiting for ‘one person to tell you they cannot find the medical care they need’ come visit me in St. Mary’s county and I will introduce you to many. Maybe that will convince you. By the way, I am not a member of MedChi, have not attended any MedChi meetings and have no other motive to respond to your comment other than your gross misstatements that are baseless.”
First, I appreciate the comment. I publish every comment I get, even those that, unlike this one, insult me personally. This blog slants toward plaintiffs and victims because I am slanted that way. But I try hard to make this a forum where I am writing as a human being who sees the world as I do, not as a plaintiffs’ lawyer’s manifesto.
The New York Personal Injury Lawyer Blog tipped me off to an article in the Chicago Tribune last week about a patient who sued her eye doctor and his assistant alleging that the doctor’s assistant licked the patient’s toes during her eye exam in Skokie, Illinois.
Apparently, the Plaintiff went to get an eye exam. The doctor’s assistant entered and dimmed the lights and told the plaintiff he would perform a “strip test.” He placed a strip over her eyes and told her she would need to keep her eyes closed for 5 to 7 minutes. Feeling something on her feet, she opened her eyes and saw him licking her toes. The assistant reportedly replied, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but I was checking your sugar level.”
Many personal injury lawyers will disagree with me, but this is my definition of a frivolous medical malpractice action. Her damages were the liked toes. Obviously, this is not good, and if it happened to my wife, I might be pretty annoyed and want to do something about it. The Plaintiff did something about it. She pressed charges, and the guy was convicted and sentenced to a year of probation. But now she wants to profit from that moment of having her toes licked and she wants to drag the doctor into it, even though there are no allegations the doctor knew or should have known that this guy was the nutcase that he apparently was. Who knows what a jury will give her, but she does not want me on that jury.
Maryland Injury Law Center