Before depositions are even taken, a plaintiff agrees to accept $7500 on a dubious case arising from an allegedly undiagnosed pregnancy, and the defense lawyer is delighted to have made the case go away for essentially nuisance value. But the real costs go far beyond the cash (The Blog That Ate Manhattan, Jul. 7, via Notes of an Anesthesioboist).
Posts Tagged ‘medical malpractice’
July 3 roundup
- Texas probate and estate lawyers seldom prosecuted when they steal funds, clients told they should just sue to get it back [Austin American-Statesman investigation]
- About a third of the way down the center strip, then just a bit to the right, you’ll find us on this much-linked map of the campaign season’s most influential websites [Presidential Watch ’08]
- Given the enormous liability exposure, would a doctor rationally want a major celebrity as a client? [Scalpel or Sword via KevinMD]
- The loser-pays difference: Canadian franchisees pursue failed class-action claim against sandwich shop Quiznos, judge orders them to pay costs of more than C$200,000 [BizOp via ClassActionBlawg]
- Annals of extreme incivility: judge condemns “heartless attack” at deposition on opposing lawyer’s pin honoring son killed in Iraq [Fulton County Daily Report]
- You keep an open wi-fi connection at home and your neighbor uses it to download music improperly. Are you an infringer too? [Doctorow via Coleman]
- As you’ve probably heard if you read blogs (but maybe not otherwise), one Canadian “human rights” tribunal has dropped action against Mark Steyn and Maclean’s; another still pursuing case [SteynOnline]
- Prison-overcrowding lawsuit could lead to early release of 27,000 California inmates [TalkLeft]
- “He absolutely would’ve gotten this DOJ job but for the anti-liberal bias … and he can’t land any other jobs?” [commenter KenVee on lawsuit over politicized Department of Justice Honors/Intern programs, Kerr @ Volokh, background]
“I do not want you to be named in the lawsuit.”
Likely occasion for an awkward conversational pause: a patient wants to thank the doctor who helped pull him through, but also needs to warn that his lawyers want to comb through the records looking for grounds on which to sue. (Jim Eichel, “If You Sue Me, I Can’t Be Your Physician”, San Diego Reader, Jun. 11)(via KevinMD).
June 16 roundup
- Educator acquitted on charges of roughness toward special ed student sues Teacher Smackdown website over anonymous comments criticizing her [NW Arkansas Morning News, Citizen Media Law Project, House of Eratosthenes]
- Lorain County, Ohio judge who struck down state’s death penalty has Che Guevara poster in his office, though Guevara wasn’t exactly an opponent of killing [USA Today]
- Privatization of U.S. Senate food service is a parable for wider issues [Tabarrok]
- Low-end strategies for acquiring criminal-law clients include trolling the attorney visiting area at the federal lockup, paying the hot dog guy in front of the courthouse [Greenfield]
- A Canadian Senator on why his country’s medical malpractice law works better than you-know-whose [Val Jones MD leads to audio]
- U.K.: convicted rapist sexually assaults and murders teenage girl after housing authority is told evicting him would breach his human rights [Telegraph]
- No word of legal action (yet, at least) in Salina, Kansas car crash that driver blames on “brain freeze” from Sonic restaurant frozen drink [AP/K.C. Star]
- In Michigan, some mysterious entity is trying to drop an electoral anvil on two of our favorite jurists [PoL]
June 12 roundup
- As I type this post, I’m listening to Andrew Frey argue Conrad Black’s appeal before Judge Posner and the Seventh Circuit. Posner seems to be confused over whether incorrect jury instructions can be prejudicial in a general verdict. [Bashman roundup; earlier]
- “For years families bogged down in Harris County [Texas] probate courts have accused judges of bleeding estates of tens of thousands of dollars to pay high-priced lawyers for unnecessary work.” [Houston Chronicle; Alpert v. Riley (Tex. App. Jun. 5, 2008) (via)]
- Company sets policy. Employee violates policy. Is corporation criminally responsible for employee’s act? [POL; FCPA blog; Podgor]
- Merrill Lynch banker asks for investigation of Enron Task Force withholding of exculpatory evidence [Bloomberg]
- When calculating the costs of medical malpractice suits, let’s not forget the noneconomic costs. “In the [John] Ritter case, the jury agreed with the defendant physicians and exonerated them of any liability. They were lucky. How lucky? They were able to spend four years with attorneys worrying about their future, including the potential that they would be ordered to pay tens of millions of dollars and be left penniless. So, they didn’t really win. They just lost less.” [EM News via Kevin MD via Dr. RW]
- Nor should we forget the defensive medicine costs. [Kevin MD]
- Legal reform = job creation. [American Courthouse]
- According to Justinian Lane, if you’re reading this post, you’re a “spineless sycophant.” [Bizarro-Overlawyered]
Mississippi forensics: corner-cutting coroners?
Mississippi medical examiner Dr. Steven Hayne, under fire relating to his forensic contributions to the state’s criminal justice system, has “also done plenty of damage to the state’s tort system, particularly in the area of medical malpractice. … ‘Lots of money can exchange hands over a cause of death determination,’ [Clarksdale cardiologist Dr. Roger] Weiner told me. ‘I wanted to make sure it exchanged hands for the right reasons. Everyone down here knows about Dr. Hayne. Tens of millions of health insurance dollars have gone to plaintiff’s lawyers down here because of him.'” Incendiary headline on the post: “In Mississippi, the Cause of Death Is Open to the Highest Bidder”. (Radley Balko, Reason “Hit and Run”, Jun. 5) (via Glenn Reynolds).
Defensive medicine debate
A doctor writes on the Kevin MD blog: “[M]eaningful control of the cost of medicine will have to go hand in hand with tort reform.” Read the comments, also.
Judges to doctors’ rescue?
Well, at least some doctors are hoping to discern such a trend on the strength of two data points: the case Ted has covered in which the Ohio Supreme Court struck down a $30 million verdict because of the shenanigans of attorney Geoffrey Fieger, and a Michigan case from March in which an appeals court overturned a $500,000 verdict against a Flint doctor and ordered a new trial. In the latter case the appeals court “noted the trial judge ‘valiantly and repeatedly attempted’ to restrain Konheim [Southfield, Mich., plaintiff attorney Joseph Konheim]. ‘There is a point, however, when an attorney’s deliberate misbehavior becomes so repetitive and egregious that it necessarily impacts the jury, notwithstanding the judge’s efforts. That point was reached here,’ the unanimous opinion states. It also says that Konheim belittled witnesses on the stand and made ‘irrelevant’ and ‘disparaging’ statements that diverted the jury’s attention from the case’s merits. Konheim is asking the court to reconsider.” (Amy Lynn Sorrel, “Lawyers’ misconduct triggers new liability trials”, AMedNews (AMA), May 5).
“Why Doctors Are Heading for Texas”
Tort reform, of course, resulting in substantially lower medical malpractice premiums and expenses, and an influx of 7000 doctors, including into many underserved regions. One indirect benefit: with less money spent on medical malpractice lawyers, self-insuring hospitals can spend more on doctors and on medical practice:
Take Christus Health, a nonprofit Catholic health system across the state. Thanks to tort reform, over the past four years Christus saved $100 million that it otherwise would have spent fending off bogus lawsuits or paying higher insurance premiums. Every dollar saved was reinvested in helping poor patients.
Also of relevance: the amusing results when Texas added evidentiary standards of medical harm to their asbestos and silicosis docket. Suddenly, over 99% of the cases went away because so few suing plaintiffs had a doctor willing to certify harm. (Joseph Nixon, WSJ, May 17). Related: POL Nov. 6, 2006 and POL Nov. 7, 2006, where I debate Texas law professor Charles Silver on these issues. Suffice it to say that the last year and a half has provided more support for my position than his.
Update: more data at Texas Medical Association website.
“4% of doctors responsible for 50% of payouts”
Trial lawyers like to repeat statistics similar to this (Bizarro-Overlawyered just did so this week) as an argument for medical malpractice being a problem of the doctors, rather than the lawyers. The problem is, as I noted three years ago, that the statistic is fallacious.
Some small X% of doctors responsible for large Y% of payouts is always going to be true simply by random chance. It’s going to be true over any time period: the problem is that if you take that time period and divide by two, the X% in the first half of the time period are going to be almost entirely different than the X% in the second half of the time period. Even if you were to fire every single one of those doctors in the tail in the first time period, all you have is X% fewer doctors; the very next year, it’s going to be a different small A% of doctors responsible for large B% of payouts, and you’ve solved nothing. With very rare exceptions medical malpractice payouts have absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the doctor, and everything to do with the risk profile of their practice.
It’s worth noting Eugene Volokh’s excellent explication of the issue: