For years, I’ve written about the prevailing myths about medical malpractice law, from the falsehoods about defensive medicine to the extraordinary economic damage caused by malpractice itself. Contrary to what the insurance companies and hospital lobbying groups keep saying, “defensive medicine” is simply a myth (if a given test didn’t make a patient substantially safer, doctors wouldn’t gain anything by doing it). The damage caused by malpractice — even when measured in purely economic terms, ignoring the non-economic harms and losses — dwarfs the cost of the malpractice legal system, including all the lawyers and all the settlements and verdicts.

Recently, the new statistics for medical malpractice filings and jury trials in 2012 were released, and those numbers revealed a couple of important points.

First, the odds at trial are heavily stacked against patients. In 2012, 133 malpractice cases went to a jury trial, and 79.7 percent of them resulted in defense verdicts. I suppose there could be valid reasons why 4 out of every 5 jury verdicts go in favor of the doctor or hospital — maybe the strongest cases are all being settled before trial, leaving only the weakest cases behind — but it’s hard to say that with a straight face when those figures mean that malpractice defendants have better odds winning in a courtroom than the odds a casino has winning its own games.

It’s hard to deny that plaintiffs are losing trials left and right thanks to years of relentless tort reform propaganda designed to mislead jurors about the nature of malpractice and its effects. It sure seems like some counties have particular problems; consider this paragraph from a recent Legal Intelligencer article:
Continue Reading The Reality of Pennsylvania Medical Malpractice