By Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog, Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog.

The Wall Street Journal has a piece entitled "What the Doctor Missed: Using Malpractice Claims to Help Physicians Avoid Diagnostic Mistakes, Delays." This article underscores a point malpractice lawyers have been making for years: malpractice lawsuits can be a part of the solution to the problem of the sometimes anemic health care we receive in this country in spite of the fact that we have the best doctors in the history of the world.

The article also underscores that diagnostic medical errors are the most common, the most costly, and often lead to the most suffering.

Originally posted at Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog. Please visit http://www.marylandinjurylawyerblog.com/.

By Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog, Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog.

WJZ reports that Maryland state health regulators are investigating another hospital suspected of performing unnecessary procedures. I think the assumption is that this involoves stents but little detail has been provided.

"We've asked the Office of Health Care Quality to do an on-site review, a utilization review of another hospital. If I wanted to name the hospital, I would have named it in the report. That's an ongoing investigation and at this point, we are maintaining that confidentiality," said Maryland Health Department Secretary John Colmers.

In other words, I have a secret and I won't tell you what it is. I hate it when people do that. But it should be more than a little annoying to the patient who is getting ready to undergo the unnecessary procedure at Hospital A. I realize you don't want to slander the hospital if your investigation turns up no solid evidence. But why bring it up in the first place? I'm no insider and there could be a very good reason why the health department is approaching it this way. But I can't figure out what it could be.

There is comedy, there is good comedy, and then there is this first posted comment to the WJZ article:

I have a lot of sympathy for doctors-our culture of 'jackpot justice' has put them in an untenable position. They are forced to perform every test in the book to guard against malpractice suits, and then are sued for performing the tests. The best thing this country could do is limit the number of JD's granted each year.

Setting aside the merits of the position, is this really the best time to make the "jackpot justice" argument? After missing a deadline on a key assignment, it is probably not the best time to ask for a raise. But, sometimes, the man with the hammer sees everything as a nail.

Originally posted at Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog. Please visit http://www.marylandinjurylawyerblog.com/.

By Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog, Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog.

Medical malpractice lawyers are just looking for a deep pocket to sue. Every time something bad happens to anyone, a lawsuit is filed. It is always only about the money.

Largely, these generalizations are just plain false. Usually, in a malpractice case, the doctor has insurance so the pockets are deep enough. Here in Maryland where we have caps on non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases, the pockets are almost always deep enough. Study after study has shown that only a very small percentage of malpractice that results in a wrongful death leads to a lawsuit or settlement. (I think I saw a study that said 4% but don’t hold me to that. Both sides of the tort reform issue argue that true victims don’t receive adequate compensation.) And, while there is no question that medical malpractice lawsuits are about money, cynics would be amazed at how often the desire to appropriately assign liability is more important to the client than how much money they recover from the lawsuit.

Yet, a significant percentage of people in the country would agree with the first paragraph of this post instead of the second. I really believe that a big reason for this is the inferences people draw from what happens when something happens to someone famous.

Why is it that every time something happens to a celebrity there is a lawyer ready and willing to file a lawsuit no matter how ridiculous the circumstances are? I know exactly why. Lawyers enjoy the status and notoriety they get when they represent a celebrity.

How do I know this? I’ve fallen prey to it myself. Ten years ago, when I was just starting a plaintiffs’ personal injury practice after being a defense lawyer, I filed a medical malpractice lawsuit against the New England Patriots. The claim against the Patriots settled and I believe it was a meritorious claim. Did I enjoy it when ESPN and CNN picked up the story? I can tell you I’m far past that point in my life now, but then? Yeah, I did. After that, I handled other high profile media cases that brought attention to myself that, I have to admit, I would never have gotten involved in if I was not (1) flattered to have been asked and (2) the plaintiff was not famous or the case was not high profile.

Like I said, I’m far past that now. I just want to be the best lawyer I can be and get the best results possible for our clients and I certainly don’t want attention for the mere filing of a lawsuit which is the ultimate Paris Hilton/Kim Kardashian “get notoriety for doing absolutely nothing” without the consolation prize of at least being very attractive while doing it.

Originally posted at Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog. Please visit http://www.marylandinjurylawyerblog.com/.

By Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog, Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog.

There is a Maryland Daily Record article out on our $1.1 million dollar verdict in the malpractice verdict in Baltimore City a few weeks ago.

Originally posted at Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog. Please visit http://www.marylandinjurylawyerblog.com/.

By Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog, Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog.

The Michigan Supreme Court came out a few weeks ago with a very interesting opinion in favor of the Plaintiff in a malpractice claim that most likely would fail in Maryland.

The doctor's malpractice attorneys argued that the allegation that the doctor's negligence caused a reduction in the risk of stroke from 10 to 20 percent to less than 5 to 10 percent was not enough to get the claim to a jury because the loss was not sufficient enough to meet the burden of proof on proximate causation. The doctor argued that Michigan law is whether the opportunity to achieve a better result was greater than 50 percent. Under this law, if the plaintiff could not prove that receiving the alleged appropriate treatment would have decreased his risk of injury by 50%, plaintiff's claim would fail.

Thankfully, a divided Michigan high court found that this is not the law and that malpractice cases such as this should be decided under a simple principle: the plaintiff is required to prove that the doctor's negligence more probably than not caused the plaintiff’s injury.

Regrettably, Maryland goes in a different direction on these types of cases as I have previously discussed. One thing Maryland has Michigan beat on is collegiality among the judges on the court. Battles in the Michigan Supreme Court are both political and personal in a way that would shock Maryland lawyers. Judges quoting political statements made by other judges to the press, the judge that wrote the majority opinion writing separately to refute one judge's personal attack - if you have no interest in this issue it is worth reading the opinion just to get a taste of what this different world is like.

Originally posted at Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog. Please visit http://www.marylandinjurylawyerblog.com/.

By Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog, Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog.

The Michigan Supreme Court came out a few weeks ago with a very interesting opinion in favor of the Plaintiff in a malpractice claim that most likely would fail in Maryland.

The doctor's malpractice attorneys argued that the allegation that the doctor's negligence caused a reduction in the risk of stroke from 10 to 20 percent to less than 5 to 10 percent was not enough to get the claim to a jury because the loss was not sufficient enough to meet the burden of proof on proximate causation. The doctor argued that Michigan law is whether the opportunity to achieve a better result was greater than 50 percent. Under this law, if the plaintiff could not prove that receiving the alleged appropriate treatment would have decreased his risk of injury by 50%, plaintiff's claim would fail.

Thankfully, a divided Michigan high court found that this is not the law and that malpractice cases such as this should be decided under a simple principle: the plaintiff is required to prove that the doctor's negligence more probably than not caused the plaintiff’s injury.

Regrettably, Maryland goes in a different direction on these types of cases as I have previously discussed. One thing Maryland has Michigan beat on is collegiality among the judges on the court. Battles in the Michigan Supreme Court are both political and personal in a way that would shock Maryland lawyers. Judges quoting political statements made by other judges to the press, the judge that wrote the majority opinion writing separately to refute one judge's personal attack - if you have no interest in this issue it is worth reading the opinion just to get a taste of what this different world is like.

Originally posted at Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog. Please visit http://www.marylandinjurylawyerblog.com/.

By Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog, Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog.

Miller & Zois lawyers Laura Zois and Rod Gaston obtained this afternoon a $1.1 million verdict for our client in a medical malpractice (lap chole) case in Baltimore City.

Originally posted at Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog. Please visit http://www.marylandinjurylawyerblog.com/.

By Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog, Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog.

A new Jury Verdict Research study found that the average verdict in an improper medication case is $3,539,541. The median, which many consider to be a more accurate number, is $1.2 million. Verdicts ranged from $2,074 to $35,500,000. But only 28% of medication error plaintiffs recover at trial. I think the problem in many medication error cases where plaintiffs do not prevail is causation because sometimes the medication error compounds a larger pre-existing health condition and it is difficult for the jury and the doctors to sort it out.

Incredibly, 1.5 million people are victims of medication errors every year, according to an Institute of Medicine study from a few years ago. Of course, most of these errors are relatively harmless. We get frequent calls from people who are justifiably angry that such a careless error was made. But, more often than not, they don't have a case because they were not significantly injured (in the malpractice sense of the word, anyway). Still, more people die annually from medication errors than from on-the-job injuries, according to the National Coordinating Council for Medication Error Reporting and Prevention, and the extra medical costs incurred from improper medication errors each year is a whopping $3.5 billion.

Originally posted at Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog. Please visit http://www.marylandinjurylawyerblog.com/.

By Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog, Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog.

One case I have been meaning to write about for a few months is Dickerson v. Longoria, a recent Maryland nursing home opinion.

The ultimate issue in Dickerson is whether a family member had the authority to bind a nursing home patient by agreeing to an arbitration clause. The Maryland Court of Appeals found that the relative did not.

But the larger issue is whether Maryland law allows for enforcement of a nursing home negligence arbitration agreement. I think it is hard to argue that a waiver signed at admission even if signed by the patient is a knowing, intelligent, and voluntary waiver of one of our most fundamental constitutional rights: the right to a jury trial.

The Maryland high court does not address this issue but also does not raise the issue. Some will interpret this as a sign that the court did not question a Maryland nursing home’s right to enforce arbitration clauses with its residents. I think this is the wrong interpretation because courts only need to decide the issue in front of them. Still, it would have been nice to see a footnote questioning the entire premise of nursing home arbitration agreements.

This case underscores the unfairness of these nursing home agreements in Maryland. One notable example: the nursing home in Dickerson reserved for itself the exclusive right to select an arbitrator. Maryland just should not allow nursing homes to stack the deck in their favor because someone - most likely under some duress - signed a small print arbitration clause upon admission to a nursing home.

You can find the full opinion here. Normally, I link to the Maryland appellate opinion site but I really think it is easier to read this opinion on Google Scholar.

Originally posted at Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog. Please visit http://www.marylandinjurylawyerblog.com/.

By Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog, Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog.

Michael Jackson's father has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against his son’s doctor. The lawsuit alleges what you would expect: the doctor's negligence was the cause of Michael Jackson's wrongful death.

This wrongful death case is arguably worth over $1 billion because of the potential future lost wages. The only bigger malpractice case I can imagine: anyone touching Tiger Woods before Bimbogate. Oh, and Oprah. How could I forget Oprah? Actually, you could throw Bill Gates in there or a few others. I'm overstating my point. Still, you get the idea. The potential damages in a wrongful death case involving Michael Jackson would be incredibly high.

But the problem is that most malpractice cases, including this one, are damages limited by the insurance the doctor has which, in this case, is reportedly $1 million. But given the potential criminal conviction and the damages, I would not be surprised to see the malpractice insurer rushing to put up the $1 million policy if it has not already been offered.

Originally posted at Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog. Please visit http://www.marylandinjurylawyerblog.com/.