I’m a trial lawyer for injured people and businesses at The Beasley Firm. Founded in 1958, we have recovered over $2 billion for our clients through hundreds of verdicts and settlements in excess of $1 million. We’re listed in Super Lawyers, Best Lawyers in America, U.S. News’s Top Lawyers, [...]
Anesthesia Complications In Routine Surgery
The lines between conscious sedation, monitored anesthesia care, general anesthesia, and life-threatening central nervous system depression are blurry and thin. As the death of Michael Jackson and prosecution of his personal physician has brought back into the spotlight (I hope), anesthesia medications like propofol are frighteningly dangerous if used improperly. It's not like taking an antihistamine and going to sleep for a couple hours. Even the "long acting" procedural sedation agents like Versed and Fentanyl work for at most an hour, whereas the short-acting agents like Propofol last for only a couple minutes. They have to be constantly administered and the patient has to be constantly monitored. ... Continue Reading
Corporate Negligence vs. Vicarious Liability In Nursing Home Abuse Lawsuits
Earlier this week, The Legal Intelligencer filed a report about the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's hearing on the Scampone v. Highland Park Care Center case: In the apparent headliner of last week's Supreme Court oral arguments in Harrisburg — a case dealing with whether a nursing home can be held liable under the theory of corporate negligence — the attorneys representing the plaintiffs told the justices they simply wanted to hold it responsible. It didn't have to be "corporate negligence," the lawyers told the justices. The acknowledgment came after several on the high court bench asked Peter D. Giglione and Stephen ... Continue Reading
Medical Apology Laws Are An Excuse To Avoid Doctors’ Ethical And Legal Duties To Patients
The Philadelphia Inquirer today profiles an issue of disturbing importance to doctors and malpractice insurance companies: the legal right to lie to patients with impunity. Of course, they don't describe it that way, they describe it like this: Many doctors feel that an apology - accepting responsibility for errors, telling what went wrong - is a dramatic advance and the right thing to do since doctors have long been loath to admit mistakes. But they say the trend will continue only if doctors know they can speak openly, without fear of being bludgeoned in a lawsuit. "Isn't that a little ... Continue Reading
The Arbitrary Tragedy of Cancer Misdiagnosis
Misdiagnosis is the most common type of medical malpractice case – roughly one-quarter of all claims – and the failure to diagnose cancer is the most common form of misdiagnosis that results in a malpractice claim. (For those interested in the statistics, the most commonly missed cancers are breast cancer, colorectal cancer, and prostate cancer.) I thus spend a lot of time thinking and talking about cancer as part of my legal practice, but over the past two weeks it has seemed like cancer has been a part of almost everything I've read and discussed. Last week, I had to ... Continue Reading
When Does A Reasonable Person Suspect Medical Malpractice?
As recently as twenty years ago, large parts of the medical establishment believed that neonatal Group B Streptococcus was rare disease that couldn't be prevented or treated. It was, and remains, the leading cause of meningitis and sepsis in newborns, but the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) didn't even have any documents, much less guidelines, on Group B Strep prevention until 1991. In 1993, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) found that Group B Strep screening was cost-effective. In 1996, the CDC, ACOG, and AAP finally published their first consensus statement ... Continue Reading
NEJM Study On Malpractice Risk By Physician Specialty
The New England Journal of Medicine released a new study in today's issue, Malpractice Risk According to Physician Specialty, which concluded: There are few recent estimates on the likelihood of malpractice claims and the size of payments according to physician specialty. Using physician-level malpractice claims from a nationwide liability insurer, we found substantial variability across specialties in each of these descriptors of liability risk. Specialties in which the largest proportion of physicians faced a claim were not necessarily those with the highest average payment size. For example, physicians in obstetrics and general surgery — both fields that are regarded as ... Continue Reading
Medical Malpractice, Errors in Judgment, and The Beginner’s Mind
Last month the American Journal of Medicine published a new study (“Longer Lengths of Stay and Higher Risk of Mortality among Inpatients of Physicians with More Years in Practice”) with the unexpected conclusion that hospitalized patients were more likely to die or stay long in the care of an experienced physician than in the care of a recent graduate from residency: According to findings in the American Journal of Medicine, patients whose doctors had practiced for at least 20 years stayed longer in the hospital and were more likely to die compared to those whose doctors got their medical license ... Continue Reading
The Burden Of Proof: A Matter Of Life And Death
When I was in law school, I took Federal Courts, a notoriously difficult and complicated class, with Laura Little, who taught it with grace and style. (Law students, take note: she wrote a commercial outline with rave reviews.) Afterwards, I told her how much I liked the class, and asked her what I should take next (law students, again take note: great way to get recommendations for classes) and she pointed me to Michael Libonati, whom she said was "probably the smartest teacher on the faculty." With a recommendation like that, I dutifully took his State and Local Governments class, ... Continue Reading
Massive Emergency Room Malpractice Award For Noncompliant Patient
I’ve written several times before about where multi-million dollar jury verdicts come from, like in A Look Behind The Scenes Of A Multi-Million Dollar Personal Injury Verdict and Strange Birth Injury Award: $21M Medical Expenses, $0 Pain and Suffering. There’s no secret recipe. Facts win cases; outrage at the defendant’s reckless conduct makes the damage awards larger. Another example was published yesterday in The Legal Intelligencer: A Philadelphia jury awarded $21.4 million on Friday to a diabetic man with brain damage over the care he received in the emergency room of Temple University Hospital. … The defense argued in ... Continue Reading
Nursing Home Abuse Lawsuit Propaganda Masquerading As Research
A Brief History of Nursing Home Litigation Civil tort litigation tends to follow larger social trends. The post-World War II through 1970s construction boom involved more than a fair amount of asbestos and was followed a generation later by the mesothelioma lawsuit industry. The rapid growth in available health care treatments (and union-negotiated health insurance plans to pay for) in the 1960s and 1970s was followed by an explosion in medical malpractice litigation in the 1980s and 1990s. The Golden age of tobacco advertising in that same time was followed by the historic class actions filed by states against the industry. ... Continue Reading
