Malpractice Lawyer Maryland Blog

Medical Malpractice Wrongful Death Statistics

2010-05-12T13:40:54Z

The Maryland Personal Injury Lawyer Blog noted a few years ago on a study indicating that the median (not average)settlement and verdict in Maryland for wrongful death medical malpractice cases over the last 20 years is $900,000. This is far more than the verdicts in Maryland's sister jurisdictions, Virginia and Washington D.C, which have medians of $750,000 and $665,700.

The median medical malpractice jury award in Maryland, according to Jury Verdict Research, is $500,000. But this was seven years ago (last data I could find). Verdicts that year ranged from $54,521 to $7,708,064. My guess is the average verdict is over $1,000,000.

JVR also provides other interesting median verdict data elsewhere: Florida - $1,257,386; New York - $1,100,000; Pennsylvania - $1,000,000; Ohio - $850,000; Indiana - $750,000; Missouri - $694,000; North Carolina - $500,000.

If you believe you have suffered an injury or a loved one died as the result of medical malpractice Maryland, Call today to speak with a Maryland malpractice lawyer at 800-553-8082 or by clicking here for a free no obligation consultation on the Internet.

Related Posts:

How Malpractice Cases Are Valued
Wrongful Death Values in Maryland (wrongful death verdict statistics
Statistics on Wrongful Death Verdicts Nationally
Wrongful Death Verdict Values for Female Decedents (average and median wrongful death values for women)
Value of Wrongful Death Auto and Truck Accident Cases in Maryland (average settlements and verdicts)
Personal Injury Verdicts Across the Country (personal injury verdicts in your state)

Maryland Burn Lawyers

2010-04-12T17:47:15Z

One of the worst possible injury claims are burn injury claims. A small minority of burn injuries are medical malpractice claims. To learn more about burn injury lawsuits in Maryland, click on the preceding link.

Heart Attack Medical Malpractice Verdicts

2010-02-03T17:40:18Z

The median jury verdict in heart attack malpractice lawsuits has been approximately $941,000.

Maryland Malpractice Law

2009-09-01T15:58:49Z

You can find a good summary of Maryland medical malpractice law here.

Maryland Informed Consent Law in Cerebral Palsy Case

2009-07-27T14:36:56Z

From Friday's Maryland Court of Appeals opinion, Quitty v. Spangler, in which the Maryland Court of Appeals affirmed the jury's $13 million award in a tragic case of a boy who was born with severe cerebral palsy, a good summary of the difference between informed consent and medical malpractice in Maryland:

"In a count alleging medical malpractice, a patient asserts that a healthcare provider breached duty to exercise ordinary medical care and skill based upon the standard of care in the profession, see, e.g., Dehn v. Edgecombe, 384 Md. 606, 618, 865 A.2d 603, 610 (2005) Medical malpractice is predicated upon the failure to exercise requisite medical skill and, being tortious in nature, general rules of negligence usually apply in determining liability.") (internal quotations and citations omitted), while in a breach of informed consent count, a patient complains that a healthcare provider breached a duty to obtain effective consent to treatment or procedure by failing to divulge information that would be material to his/her decision about whether to submit to, or to continue with, that treatment or procedure."

Lockshin v. Semsker

2009-07-21T16:42:31Z

In Lockshin v. Semsker, The Maryland Court of Appeals granted cert last week, bypassing the Maryland Court of Special Appeals. The big issue? Whether the Montgomery County trial court erred in holding that the cap on non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases does not apply in cases where health claims arbitration was waived.

The Cap Does Not Fit

2009-07-13T16:19:06Z

The New York Times has an editorial this week called "The Cap Doesn't Fit." I don't agree with all of the conclusions in the editorial but it is worth a read.

Colorado's Michael Skolnik Medical Transparency Act in 2007: Progress But Also Toothless

2009-06-01T14:54:06Z

Colorado now requires doctors to self report medical malpractice claims that have resulted in settlement or plaintiffs' verdict under the Michael Skolnik Medical Transparency Act in 2007. The Act is named for a patient who Skolnik died in June of 2004 after he had surgery done by a doctor who'd been the subject of a malpractice claim in another state.

Sounds like good new for patients looking to determine whether there are medical malpractice claims against their doctor. But it is up to the doctor to self-report malpractice claims and the Colorado will no auditing their entries. The risk for Colorado doctors: $5,000 for failure to report each malpractice claim. So doctors who choose to hide something, believing it could be bad for business so they are willing to risk the $5,000, will have to be caught by a patient, rather than someone from the state of Colorado.

This is progress but we need more progress. This new Colorado law is the right start, it just needs sharper teeth.

Malpractice Editorial: Everyone Can Point Out the Problems

2009-05-27T13:34:49Z

If I was an editor of a newspaper, I would ban all editorials that just complain of a problem without offer anything resembling a solution. This editorial in the Denver Post is classic. Just babbling on about the problem, pretending to focus on patients, without offering anything resembling a solution. We need to compensate victims but a fault based system is a bad idea? The cost of compensating everyone who suffers a medical injury would be insane. Justice requires effort. Sorry. Trite platitudes about how the battles over caps are a waste of energy add nothing to the conversation. You have a plan you can defend? Articulate it. Otherwise, save the solution-free speeches.

The Maryland Malpractice Lawyer Blog has a number of links to a few Baltimore Sun editorials that rail against malpractice caps (and, directly and indirectly, Maryland malpractice lawyers). I disagree strongly with these editorials (at least the ones that do not want to raise the malpractice caps in Maryland) but at least they are offering real opinions. This Denver Post editorial is like writing an editorial saying auto accidents are bad. We get this. But offer a solution that you can defend.

Maryland Increases Hospital Reimbursements

2009-05-18T18:38:00Z

Maryland doctors have largely have two targets: Maryland medical malpractice lawyers and insurance companies. With respect to the latter, it made a small step forward last week when the Maryland Health Services Cost Review Commission came to a compromise with hospital representatives and insurers on the rates Maryland hospitals can charge to patients Wednesday by approving a 1.77% increase.

Earlier this week, hospital representatives, insurers and state officials agreed on a rate increase of 2.12 percent, but the commission decided to drop the rate to a 1.77 percent increase. The Maryland Hospital Association initially asked for an increase of 3.8 percent.

You would think 1.77 percent is no big deal. But it will bring in an additional $230 million for Maryland hospitals.

Ed McMahon's Medical Malpractice Lawsuit Setttles

2009-05-18T17:23:01Z

Ed McMahon from Tonight Show fame, settled his medical malpractice lawsuit against a Los Angeles hospital after breaking his neck, one of his malpractice lawyers told reporters. McMahon sued the hospital claiming that doctors failed to diagnose his broken neck after a fall and discharged him without taking an X-ray. He also accused the hospital of botching two subsequent spine operations.

Any malpractice lawyer will tell you these are tough claims. You need to know the facts of any lawsuit before rendering an opinion - all of the facts. But having said that, celebrities are able to find lawyers to file lawsuits that no one else would consider touching with a ten foot pole.

Failure to Read X-Ray Leads to $2.1 Million Award

2009-05-18T17:04:24Z

A jury in Philadelphia awarded the widow of a man who allegedly died as the result a doctor's failure to read an x-ray because he had a corporate meeting was awarded $2.185 million in a malpractice suit against St. Joseph's Hospital and that doctor and another emergency room doctor.

The emergency room doctor had appropriate ordered several lab tests, including X-rays and echocardiograms, but it took almost two hours for some of the tests to be performed, said one of Plaintiff's medical malpractice lawyers. Worse still, after the x-rays and other tests were prepared and completed, the emergency-room doctors never reviewed them before they were sent to radiology, a practice required by hospital procedure. The man died that night from a dissecting aortic aneurysm. X-rays that hat would have revealed this condition weren't "interpreted" until the next day when it was too late.

The defense malpractice lawyers strategy was to blame the victim. First, the lawyers claimed the man had a history of hypertension and "chronic noncompliance" in taking his blood-pressure medication. Second, they claimed that could not have saved him even he had been timely diagnosed. Suffice to say, the jury disagreed.

Oregon Raises Limits on Malpractice Lawsuit Awards

2009-05-18T16:58:37Z

Oregon has raised the limits on malpractice and other negligence awards against public employees. This new Oregon law restricts damages at $1.5 million to $3.5 million for state hospitals and clinics. The medical malpractice caps will rise to the $2 million to $4 million range for five years.

This sounds like a lot of money but I'm assuming these are hard caps which means they are essentially claims that discriminate against typically child brain injury cases such as cerebral palsy where the economic damages to maintain the child are incredibly high. It seems insane to me to single out these types of cases for a malpractice cap.

Malpractice Lawyer Seeks New Trial for Conduct of Newspaper

2009-05-14T01:28:37Z

The Southeast Texas Record has an interesting story about plaintiffs' medical malpractice attorney Valorie Davenport's motion for new trial in a malpractice lawsuit she lost in a failure to diagnose breast cancer case. One of the lawyer's ground for a new trial is the Southeast Texas Record tampered with the jury.

"The acts (of distributing these periodicals to ... sitting jurors) constituted attempted jury tampering and probably resulted in the unjust verdict ... and requires that a new trial be granted," the motion states.

The whole things sounds completely crazy. You can read the article on the case here.

Malpractice Rates in Oregon

2009-05-13T00:48:42Z

Like Maryland, Oregon is seeing declining medical malpractice premiums for doctors.

The DCBS Insurance Division found that doctors insured by Oregon's two largest medical malpractice insurers - Continental Casualty Company (CNA) and Northwest Physicians Insurance Company have experienced an average 18 percent rate decrease since 2005 (see chart below). This is the exact same experience we have had in Maryland. "In the earlier part of this decade, rising malpractice insurance costs were a significant concern for specialty doctors, particularly in rural areas, forcing many to leave the state," said Cory Streisinger, director of the Oregon Department of Consumer and Business Services. "The recent decline in rates should help Oregon continue to retain and attract highly skilled physicians."

Every state seems to have some doctors' lobbying group (MedChi in Maryland) that is always talking about how it is losing its doctors to some other state. Nevada is another classic example of this. The lobbyist for its doctors spent a ton of money to scare voters into enacting ridiculous caps on medical malpractice lawsuits.

But my question is what state are all of the doctors going? They have to go somewhere, right?