Maryland Medical Malpractice Attorney Blog

The Maryland high court provides a good look at just how complicated the implications of joint tortfeasor releases can be in Hashmi v. Bennett, a medical malpractice case filed against Good Samaritan Hospital of Maryland and a number of other medical providers.

Plaintiffs' filed a medical malpractice survival action/wrongful death lawsuit claiming defendants failed to diagnose and treat plaintiffs' father, a 27 year-old man, who showed signs and symptoms of progressive septic methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, and was treated instead with Ambien to help him sleep.

Good Samaritan Hospital settled the case for $550,000 and the claim against the emergency room practice and the ER doctor settled for $400,000. The case against the doctor at the hospital who treated the patient was taken to verdict and a Baltimore City jury awarded Plaintiffs $2,295,000, which was reduced by the Maryland medical malpractice cap to $1,795,000.

The doctor filed a motion to reduce the verdict pursuant to the Maryland Contribution Among Joint Tort-Feasors Act. 9, claiming contribution not only from the settling defendants but other health care providers not involved in the medical malpractice lawsuit (a doctor and two nurses). In other words, the doctor wanted to split up the obligation for the $1.8 million as many different ways as he could. The trial court disagreed and reduced the judgment by two-thirds, leaving $598,333.333.

The Maryland Court of Appeals found that if a plaintiff releases a joint tortfeasor, the verdict against any other joint tortfeasor is to be reduced by the amount paid or by any proportion that the settlement release provides if it is greater than the amount paid. In this case, the release provided for a pro rata reduction which is exactly what the court gave. In principal/agent cases, both should be considered one joint tortfeasor for the purpose of determining reduction.

The case gets into a bunch of other issues, including the all important question of how you spell tortfeasor/tort-feasor. Since the Maryland legislature uses a hyphen, the court decides it will use a hyphen. I am asserting my independence as, you know, a journalist and spelling it without a hyphen.

If you are a lawyer dealing with a joint tortfeasor release in a Maryland medical malpractice lawsuit or any other personal injury claim, this is one of the cases you want to read. You can find it here.

Sometimes, lawyers or potential clients will ask for a Maryland medical malpractice lawyer who focuses on dental malpractice cases. I laugh. No malpractice lawyers focus on dental malpractice cases. Why? Typically, the damages are insignificant. This was not the problem in a South Carolina malpractice lawsuit that went to verdict last week.

A 25-year-old female plaintiff claimed she chipped an upper front tooth and went to Sexton Dental Clinic in Florence for treatment. Most medical malpractice attorneys reading this story expect that the doctor made a mistake that caused patient harm, but not the type of injury that would justify a medical malpractice lawsuit. Well, the doctor came in and pulled all 16 of her upper teeth without looking at the treatment plan or obtaining her permission. The dentist then allegedly altered the patients' medical records to create the appearance that the patient had consented to having more than three teeth pulled.

This is a real problem for a defendant's medical malpractice lawyer. But this dentist was just getting started. Defendant's attorney conceded in opening statement that some number of teeth had been pulled without the plaintiff's consent but that it had been a mistake. But the doctor decided to go all in. He claimed that there had been no mistake and that he had pulled all 16 teeth without looking at the agreed-upon treatment plan and without first obtaining plaintiff's consent. This makes no sense.

To add to the insanity, the defendant's malpractice lawyer argued that as a walk-in clinic, there was a different standard of care than at a regular dentist.

Gee, surprisingly, the jury agreed this was insane to the tune of $2 million, $1.5 million of which was punitive damages.

You can read more about malpractice case against this dentist whose license I suspect is now in jeopardy here.

Opening statements began Wednesday in a dental malpractice case in New Jersey. Successful dental malpractice cases in Maryland are rare for a single reason: there are few dental malpractice cases where the damages rise to the level of making a malpractice claim economically viable from the standpoint of a Maryland malpractice lawyer.

This New Jersey case is a rare, tragic exception because the alleged dental malpractice resulted in the death of the patient.

You can find the article on the case here.

Our law firm generally avoids dental malpractice claims because the injuries - while often incredibly significant to the patient - typically do not involve the kind of permanent injuries that are required for a malpractice case. Interestingly, I stumbled across data that indicated that there were 766 dental malpractice payments made in Maryland between 1990 and 2003. That is almost 5 claims a month which is more than I would have thought. I wonder (1) how many of these dental medical malpractice claims in Maryland involved a lawyer, (2) what the average dental malpractice settlement is in Maryland, and (3) how many claims were settled without a lawyer.