Ala. Supreme Court Reverses $3.85 Million Malpractice Verdict

September 5, 2007

  • September 5, 2007 at 8:31 am
    Nobody Important says:
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    Have you ever served on a jury? I’m no knuckle dragger (well, a little), but thinks look different up there even in the simplest of cases. Tough job. I don’t like the idea of professional jurors, but it might be a good idea in many ways.

  • September 6, 2007 at 12:01 pm
    Mike says:
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    I am a lawyer who represents plaintiffs in medical malpractice cases. The comments regarding this article could not be further from the truth. The case at issue had to be based upon actual malpractice supported by testimony of an obstetrician. Otherwise, the judge would not have allowed the case to get to the jury. Contrary to the comments, jurors very rarely give justice to the injured plaintiff in medical malpractice trials. I was just at a pretrial conference today for a case that will be tried next week. The judge told the defense lawyer and me that one of the issues we were discussing made little difference “because the plaintiffs never win these cases anyway.” Read the May 2007 Michigan Law Review article “Doctors and Juries”. The author reviewed seven articles in medical journals that compared jury verdicts to insurance companies’ own reviews by physician reviewers and concluded that “the studies show that juries favor doctors even more than physician reviewers do. The empirical literature does not support the view that juries are biased in favor of injured plaintiffs.” I have waived a jury trial in every case I have handled during the past five or six years. The doctors’ lawyers have paid the jury fee in every one of those cases because they know that they have a better chance of fooling twelve jurors than a judge who knows what malpractice is. According to the National Practitioner Data Bank, in my state, Wisconsin, there were only four payments made to patients for malpractice for every 1,000 practicing doctors in the state. Last year only two plaintiffs won jury trials in malpractice cases in the entire state. Only 67 people in the state received compensation for injuries suffered by malpractice. The fact is that juries let negligent doctors off the hook much more often than they should. By the way, the definition of malpractice provided by the first person to write a comment is not the law around here or in most states. The standard definition of malpractice is a failure to exercise the degree of skill, care, and judgment usually used by a reasonable doctor of the specialty of the defendant doctor under the same or similar circumstances considering the state of medical practice at the time of the incident.

  • September 5, 2007 at 2:09 am
    Bill Reed says:
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    Malpractice or simply a less than desirable outcome? A breach delivery presents an immediate danger to both the mother and infant. The appropriate medical protocol is to attempt to turn the infant inside the womb. That protocol was followed in this instance. Any parent would be devastated under the circumstances. Their suit may be rooted in anger directed at the physician. One has to aske the question “what happens when a physician does the best he can under the circumstances, but the outcome is bad?” Is that malpractice? There are inherent risks to any type of medical procedure and nothing comes with a 100% guarantee. Even if the physician makes a mistake, it it malpractice? Here’s the legal definition:

    “failure of a professional person, as a physician or lawyer, to render proper services through reprehensible ignorance or negligence or through criminal intent, esp. when injury or loss follows; any improper, negligent practice; misconduct or misuse.”

    Just because you get a bad outcome doesn’t automatically translate to professional negligence.

  • September 5, 2007 at 2:25 am
    clm mgr says:
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    Bill: The definition is one thing. How the case is presented to the jury is quite another. Otherwise how do you explain a $10 Million award to the wife of a heart transplant patient who died of complications following a heart attack with his new heart? That person was 76 years old, was living on borrowed time anyway because he had previously undergone a heart transplant, and expired when his new heart failed after a couple of years. Granted, I don’t have the details laid out by the plaintiff in the Trial of the case, but to me the award is excessive and the “malpractice” seems tenuous given the legal definition you quoted. But nevertheless a jury came up with the $10 Million in the litigation lottery. Our system is broken and we all participated in breaking it.

  • September 5, 2007 at 2:58 am
    Bill Reed says:
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    I saw the write-up on the heart attack case in Palm Beach and agree it was another bastardization of a flawed system. The sad reality of our liberal society is that jurys lack the ability to maintain objectivity and want to give people money to make them feel better. Too many times liability/negligence gets ignored. I’d like to see a “professional juror” system akin to Japan’s system. They’re educated, tested, reviewed, and well-paid. I can always dream can’t I?

  • September 5, 2007 at 4:27 am
    clm mgr says:
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    I have long espoused the idea of a professional jury system, and I guess all of us who could be accused of being ‘insurance insiders’ would agree that a system of professional juries would work best. Try to get that past the Trial Lawyers though. Nice to know there are other dreamers out there.

  • September 5, 2007 at 4:42 am
    DAN MARTINEZ says:
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    The reason why the dr. was sued is because the doctor failed to inform the mother that their was a complication before hand and he was going to try to save the baby by positioning the baby to be born head first which was standard procedure.

  • September 5, 2007 at 5:26 am
    EC says:
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    Okay so maybe the professional jury will not fly but surely there should be some kind of minimum IQ level required. The ability to reason must come into play. The attys love the less than educated ones. Not that educated people make all correct decisions but at least they can understand the more difficult concepts presented.

  • September 5, 2007 at 6:17 am
    clm mgr says:
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    Wait a minute, EC. 20% of our citizens can’t even locate the U.S. on a globe. What does that tell you about the depth of the jury pool? I’ve been in many trials and am constantly amazed by the slack-jawed, knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing component in at least a few jurors on each jury. Based on the current statistic, 2 out of 10 jurors won’t even know where they are……..

  • September 6, 2007 at 7:41 am
    Nobody Important says:
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    Now I can tell you are a shill for the trial lawyers. Quote phoney statisticts all you want. Nobody believes you. Sadly that’s probably not true. Too many people buy into your baloney.



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