Maryland Medical Malpractice Attorney Blog

The Illinois Medical Malpractice Blog has a post with a link to a Miami Herald article on a 12 year-old boy who died of serotonin syndrome. The mother of the boy filed a wrongful death and medical malpractice lawsuit last week in Miami-Dade circuit court, claiming the child's psychiatrist, and the now closed group home where this autistic boy lived, failed to properly monitor his condition.

Serotonin syndrome is a rare but not idiosyncratic response to what is a good thing in the appropriate dosage: serotonin. This child was taking Seroquel, Zyprexa, Depakote, and Clonazepam.

While it is easy to question whether some of these drugs should have been prescribed for this boy, the medical malpractice question is whether his death was from serotonin syndrome and whether this combination of drugs was such that a reasonably prudent psychiatrist (and the group home) should have not prescribed this level of medication or should have more carefully monitored the child. Specifically on this point, the malpractice lawsuit alleges that the doctor had not seen the child in a year before the day he died and that the boy exhibited symptoms that he was reacting poorly to the medication.

I can't prejudge the merits of many malpractice cases, including this one, without seeing all of the evidence. But it is easy to make the following judgment: malpractice or not, this is a tragic case.

The Chattanooga Times Free Press reports that a Hamilton County jury found that a local, prominent gastroenterologist must pay $12 million in a medical malpractice lawsuit after a colonoscopy and endoscopy, which were meant to diagnose a 33 year old woman's bowel problems, left the plaintiff with serious brain damage.

“It is very, very difficult to get a judgment against a doctor,” said Matt Dwyer, a Georgia medical malpractice lawyer who was apparently brought in on the case. “People don’t like to find doctors at fault.”

Under Tennessee's comparative fault law, the jury found the doctor's medical malpractice was 51% percent of the cause of Plaintiff's permanent brain damage, so the actual verdict is $6.12 million.

Maryland draconian contributory negligence law requires a defense verdict in a malpractice case where a plaintiff is even 1% at fault for an accident. The article does not explain at whose lap the jury placed the other 49% of the fault. But if they placed it with someone other than the Plaintiff, Maryland’s contributory negligence law would ironically lead to a better outcome for the Plaintiff. In Maryland, you can recover a full verdict against any defendant who is a substantially contributory cause of the injury, as long as you were not also a cause of your own injuries.

Forbes provides the top paying jobs in the United States. Here are the top 5:

1. Surgeons ($206,770)
2. Anesthesiologists ($197,570)
3. Orthodontists ($194,930)
4. Obstetrician and gynecologists ($192,780)
5. Oral and maxillofacial surgeons ($190,420)

The New York Personal Injury Law Blog also reports on this new Forbes data and my comments largely echo his. First, doctors should be making a lot of money a year. There is no more important profession. Second, when you say a doctor is paying X for medical malpractice coverage, that number is completely out of context. If you are making $200,000 a year and paying $80,000 in medical malpractice premiums, you are still making $200,000 a year. Businesses have a lot of expenses, as my law firm will gladly affirm. But the just providing premium data is completely out of context.

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