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.  

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.