The Law Blog of Plaintiff's Attorney Max Kennerly
Overlawyered passes along a misleading description of the "tort reform" provisions in the Senate health care bill from an anonymous Capitol Hill source:
The “tort reform” section of Senator Reid’s substitute amendment is not merely meaningless, but is actually a significant giveaway to the trial lawyers. It is essentially a 5-year, 50-million dollar grant program
…
In a comment on Overlawyered, Ted Frank points to his draft paper (with Marie Gryphon), Negotiating in the Shadow of ‘Bad Faith’ Refusal to Settle: A Game Theory Model of Medical Malpractice Pre-Trial Settlements and Insurance Limits:
Recent empirical studies of Texas data by Hyman et al, Zeiler et al, and Silver et al
…
Philip K. Howard, whose nonsense medical malpractice "health courts" idea I’ve panned before, is back pushing more hooey from two insurance and corporate front groups, Common Good and the Committee for Economic Development:
Because modern medicine is so complex, reliability almost certainly requires some kind of special court. This country has a
…
Professor Richard Epstein of the University of Chicago published an opinion piece in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal on medical malpractice.
"Embarrassingly ignorant" would be a charitable description. Eric Turkewitz calls it "flat out false."
How bad was it? Turkewitz caught two outright falsehoods:
American courts commonly think it proper for juries to infer medical negligence from
…
Following up on yesterday’s discussion of an emergency physician’s critique of medical malpractice reform in Pennsylvania, in which the physician claimed, without any evidence, that the number of defendants in malpractice cases has risen recently, negating many of the benefits of malpractice reform.
Put simply, he missed the boat. The number of defendants does…
WhiteCoat (and later Walter Olson) directed me to this op-ed in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette by Gerald F. O’Malley, a Philadelphia-based emergency physician:
… Governor Rendell recently declared that Pennsylvania’s malpractice lawsuit abuse crisis is over. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Rendell’s announcement comes on the heels of the Pennsylvania Supreme
…
Not too long ago, I believe at the recommendation of Walter Olson at Overlawyered, I started reading WhiteCoat Rants (renamed WhiteCoat’s Call Room when he moved to Emergency Physicians Monthly), an anonymous blog authored by a voluble ED doctor.
I have over 300 feeds in my Google Reader, including venture capitalists, scientists,…
The WSJ Law Blog points us to an Op-Ed in the NYTimes:
Restoring a foundation of trust requires a new system of medical justice. Medical cases are now decided jury by jury, without consistent application of medical standards. According to a 2006 study in the New England Journal of Medicine, around 25 percent of
…
In the comments to “Can the Octuplets Sue for Medical Malpractice,” B. Barton asks:
Numerous sources have reported that Ms. Suleman wanted these [6] remaining embryos transferred [2 of which split into twins]. Where does liability lie if that’s true?
Good question. Since there’s little doubt that it’s a breach in the standard…
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…