Published By: Maxwell S. Kennerly, Esquire

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It’s no secret that patients and their lawyers have a lot of difficulty finding physicians to serve as expert witnesses in medical malpractice cases. A large fraction of doctors refuse to ever testify in a patient’s favor, regardless of how negligent, reckless, or reprehensible the care provided by the defendant-doctor was. Among the doctors who do testify on behalf of patients, most will only testify against doctors in other jurisdictions, adding difficulties in communication and scheduling as well as travel costs. It also makes it harder for plaintiff’s lawyers to find qualified, credible experts, because we don’t know them by reputation the same way we know local doctors. Just this week MedScape had a column bragging about how “tort reform” expert witness laws make malpractice cases harder and more expensive, and thus thwart many patients with valid claims from even having their day in court, much less recovering compensation.

For defense lawyers, the process of finding an expert is quite easy: they call up their insurer or their local hospital and are immediately provided with a willing local expert. The code of silence around the medical profession is alive and well.

There are, however, some notable — and laudable — exceptions, and in Philadelphia one of those exceptions was on the receiving end of some particularly appalling conduct by a defense lawyer for doing nothing more than preparing to tell the truth in a courtroom: 
Continue Reading Defense Lawyer Sanctioned For Expert Witness Intimidation In Medical Malpractice Case

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

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It’s conventional wisdom among trial lawyers and insurance lawyers that few plaintiffs are as sympathetic as a brain-damaged baby. The baby plainly did nothing to contribute to their harm, but has nonetheless been deprived of many of the basic joys of their infancy, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. It’s thus presumed that, if a jury finds…

Update, September 7, 2012: More than a year ago, I wrote “It’s possible KV will sue the FDA over [the decision not to go after compounding pharmacies] — arguing, in essence, that the FDA is disobeying its own statutes and regulations, and thus in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act …” That happened in …

It may sound strange coming from me, but I don’t like suing people, particularly not in personal injury or professional liability actions where the real target of the suit is not even the company that employed the negligent person, but really the employer’s insurance company.

But I often end up suing everyone I can, including…

Of the over one million people injured or killed annually by preventable medical malpractice, only a fraction have their claims reviewed by the legal system. We can’t be sure how small that fraction is — since the health care industry spends millions of dollars every year convincing Congress to frustrate error-reporting — but we know…

Some of the largest cases involve medical malpractice cerebral palsy. A recent medical malpractice case from the bought-yourself-an-appeal department:

Citing multiple trial errors, a New Jersey appeals court has reversed an $18.9 million verdict against an obstetrician whose delay in ordering a Caesarean delivery a jury found to have caused cerebral palsy in

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Continuing on from our discussion yesterday, medical malpractice, like any other negligence tort, is proven by showing:

(1) the defendant had a duty to the plaintiff to act a certain way,

(2) that the defendant breached that duty,

(3) that the defendant’s breach caused the plaintiff harm and

(4) that the harm caused is…