Medical Malpractice

• Searching For The Frivolous Medical Malpractice Lawsuit

  Bob Carroll | April 30, 2006 9:44 AM | 1 CommentTampa Bay, FL

  If it were possible to focus our attention on one really big issue in medical care would frivolous lawsuits be anywhere near the top of the list? Not according to Frivolous lawsuits? Pfft!, a post by Marie Carnes at Disarranging Mine. Marie, who says she has been a legal secretary for both plaintiff and defense lawyers for 30 years, has only seen one lawsuit that should never have been filed....

• Taking On The Medical Malpractice Myths

  Bob Carroll | April 27, 2006 6:38 AM | 0 CommentsTampa Bay, FL

  Michael Kaplen, at the Brain Injury News and Information Blog, posts an excellent article, Patient Rights: Exposing the Myths Surrounding Medical Malpractice. I hope Michael will understand why I feel the need to publish so many excerpts below.In a new book entitled, The Medical Malpractice Myth,Tom Baker, Connecticut Mutual Professor of Law and director of the Insurance Center at the...

• Don't Sign Your Rights Away In Your Doctor's Office

  Bob Carroll | April 26, 2006 7:57 AM | 0 CommentsTampa Bay, FL

  Las Vegas, protector of patient rights? You got it. From the Las Vegas Sun comes a message for all of us in Florida. Editorial: Signing your rights away Preserve access to courts for consumers, including those who are seeing doctorsA Las Vegas Sun story on Monday recounted the ordeal of a local woman who went more than two years without an obstetrician/gynecologist after being dropped by her...

• Hospitals Continue To Do Bad Things To Good People

  Bob Carroll | April 21, 2006 3:55 PM | 0 CommentsTampa Bay, FL

  An Editorial in USA Today is not apt to make you feel good about your next visit to the hospital. Surgical screw-ups are a small part of a much larger patient-safety problem in hospitals.Incidents such as bedsores, post-operative infections and failure to diagnose and treat conditions that develop in the hospital continued to plague American hospitals, according to a new study of Medicare...

• Be A Questioning Patient In Your Doctor's Office

  Bob Carroll | April 20, 2006 7:04 AM | 1 CommentTampa Bay, FL

  I think I would like Dr. Fred Ernst. He gave a talk in Alabama recently that should have been on national television. The Birmingham News article, excerpted below, hits the main point - patients have to ask questions and, then, even more questions. Maybe a doctor can comment on this proactive approach to health care.Patients urged to ask doctors questions In an era of medical errors, people...

• Do Experts From The Other 49 States Give False Testimony?

  Bob Carroll | April 12, 2006 7:56 AM | 0 CommentsTampa Bay, FL

  Foolish me - I thought the so-called "tort reform" effort in the Florida Legislature to restrict expert witnesses in medical malpractice cases to Florida doctors (or the chosen few who are certified as acceptable witnesses) was intended to dry-up the pool of experts willing to testify on behalf of injured patients. After all, if all potential medical experts had to come from the State of...

• A (Dental) Bridge Too Far And The $130,00 Verdict

  Bob Carroll | April 09, 2006 7:04 AM | 0 CommentsTampa Bay, FL

  Bad things can happen in dentist's chairs. Sometimes, when they are really bad, they end up in a dental malpractice lawsuit.Excerpts from the Connecticut Post article:Dentist ordered to pay $130,000 BRIDGEPORT -- A Superior Court jury Thursday ordered a Westport dentist to pay more that $130,000 to a West Haven woman who brought a malpractice claim against him.The six-member jury deliberated...

• How To Pay $7.9 Million On A $200,000 Insurance Policy - Why Medical Malpractice Premiums Are So High

  Bob Carroll | April 02, 2006 7:30 AM | 0 CommentsTampa Bay, FL

  The attorney for the injured patient was trying to settle the medical malpractice case for the amount of the doctor's insurance, $200,000. The insurance company drew the line at $50,000. (And, only employed one defense attorney to defend two physicians with conflicting stories to tell.) Now, the insurance company will have to pay $7.9 Million. Could this explain the high cost of medical...

• "More Likely Than Not" Your Doctor Can Avoid Paying Damages

  Bob Carroll | March 30, 2006 11:01 AM | 0 CommentsTampa Bay, FL

  There is a doctrine in the law of the State of Florida that frustrates justice and provides immunity to many medical providers. The doctrine requires that the damages awarded to a patient victim of medical malpractice are limited to only those "more likely than not" to have been caused by the misconduct. On the surface, this doctrine or rule (created in the Gooding Case) seems perfectly fair. ...

• Law School Invites Docs To Attend Classes On Medical Malpractice

  Bob Carroll | March 28, 2006 5:16 AM | 0 CommentsTampa Bay, FL

  Can doctors and lawyers benefit from attending classes on medical malpractice together? More importantly, would the public (meaning patients and clients) be better off? ABC News reports on an experiment at a southern law school that may have some merit.Except for a crop of gray hair, the enrollees in Sean Byrne's malpractice course at the University of Richmond Law School look like normal...