Maryland Medical Malpractice Attorney Blog

The Madison St. Clair Record has an article on a medical malpractice case that is in its sixth day of the second time trying the case. The case alleges failure to diagnose skin cancer.

Interestingly, the first case ended in a mistrial after a defense verdict when it was discovered that a juror lied about his role in two pending personal injury lawsuits. Usually when the issue of jury honesty in voir dire is raised, it is almost invariably the defendant after a plaintiff's verdict.

The article also provides some highlights from this medical malpractice trial including this one: "So, you think there are some situations where the doctor can play Russian roulette with the revolver?" As you can imagine, this one drew an objection.

This is a sample Maryland medical malpractice lawsuit. The links on the right of the document provide other examples of motions, pleadings and discovery in Maryland medical malpractice lawsuits.

We provide a lot of medical malpractice samples on our website for the Maryland malpractice lawyer who wants to see how another lawyer approaches the workup of a malpractice claim. If you have no experience and understanding of how to handle a malpractice claim, I think you are inviting a different kind of malpractice claim - legal malpractice - if you try to handle the case on your own without an experienced malpractice lawyer.

A jury in southwest Rhode Island returned a verdict of almost $1 million against the chief of surgery at South County Hospital in Washington County after a long 10 day trial.

The gist of the lawsuit was the care and treatment rendered in - of all things - a big toe surgery.
Plaintiff's malpractice attorney won with the jury not only on negligence but on confirmed consent which is frequently a tough hill to climb.

Notwithstanding this verdict, the defendant may well be a fine doctor. But it is really weird to me that a podiatrist would become the chief of surgery. It is late, I'm tired, I keep going back to make sure I'm reading that right. Yep, I am. I've had issues raised as to whether a podiatrist is even qualified to testify in cases where the surgery was performed by an orthopedist.

The Baltimore Sun has an opinion piece about Maryland hospitals' refusal to do what most businesses are doing in 2010: cutting costs.

Hospitals for both the better and for the worse, do not generally attract the entrepreneurial type. This is often a good thing. The majority of health care workers in a hospital setting are focused on healing patients. That's where their heads ought to be. So I think it is difficult to just expect them to fall in line with the rest of the market. Hospital administrators need to look to try to fight this inertia by making sure hospitals are grabbing the low hanging fruit that can reduct costs. But, realistically, there is only so much that can be done without more investment (financial and psychological) in technology.

A Florida appeals court gave an interesting ruling in Kristensen-Kepler v. Cooney on the question of whether there was potential liability against an ambulatory surgical center.

Plaintiff's wrongful death claim was that the ambulatory surgical center's anesthesiologist negligently caused an infection in decedent's spine. The court found that the surgery center was not directly the patient's injuries and death because the patient did not choose the surgical center as the site of his surgery. Instead, the patient chose the doctor who directed the patient to the surgical center.

You can read the full opinion here.

The Maryland Daily Record has an article today on a defense verdict in a claim against Upper Chesapeake Medical Center in Hartford County. The claim was not against a doctor but the nursing staff.

From reading the article, it sounds like a tough case in a difficult jurisdiction.

Lawyers USA probes the question of whether juries will be impacted by health care reform. A jury consultant quoted in the article does a nice job of summarizing one of the critical differences between urban and rural juries:

Smaller town venues will be much more problematic for plaintiffs than urban centers where people have choices for medical care. If potential jurors only have one, or maybe two, hospitals in a 40-mile radius, they are going to be somewhat protective of those places even if they may have made a mistake.

This explains, in part, the difference between the jurors in malpractice cases in Baltimore City and jurors in, say, Ocean City.

New York has received a federal grant to study alternative ways to resolve medical malpractice lawsuits. The grant follows the plan of New York Judge Douglas McKeon who puts an emphasis on listening to the parties and understanding the motivations in bringing and defending malpractice lawsuits.

The idea is that we should be spending money and effort to think of new ways to resolve medical malpractice claims. I'll be interested to learn if from these efforts any really "new" ways are uncovered. Instead, it seems to me millions and even billions of dollars have already been "spent" trying to solve this problem organically. I can't imagine a few pilot programs making a big difference. Not saying the effort is a bad idea but I'm skeptical as to whether it will yield any real result.

I had the pleasure today to compute post judgment interest in a case we won at trial and on appeal. Maryland's post-judgment interest rate is 10%. Unfortunately, the interest does not compound so the real rate of interest declines over time. In fairness to parties that win at trial only to have the case unnecessarily delayed by endless appeals, it would make sense to increase the post-judgment interest rate over time. Of course, the changes this gains momentum in the Maryland legislature is the same as LeBron James selecting the University of Maryland tonight.