Maryland Injury and Disability Law : Washington DC Metro Injury & Disability Lawyer & Attorney : Greenberg & Bederman : Accidents, Falls, Medical Malpractice : Maryland, DC, Virginia

The business lobbying titan that is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce also engages in Flat Earth behavior, particularly when the subject is climate change. Their official position is that 99% of climatologists and researchers are either wrong or simply making it up when they claim that our planet is getting warmer due to carbon emissions. And they are pleased to present you with a list of the dozen or so scientists who don’t believe in global warming.

The major difference between the Flat Earth Society and the tobacco and manufacturing companies is that the Flat Earth Society actually believes in what they are saying whereas big tobacco and the Chamber of Commerce are simply pretending to believe. They know that tobacco is dangerous, and they do know that global warming exists. They are doing the Flat Earth routine because the alternative is more regulations on their industries, and regulations cost money.

Here’s the Flat Earth method: Deny. Deny again. Dispute the evidence, and then the providers of that evidence. Question the motives of the people who provide the evidence. Find someone willing to present your evidence, no matter how flimsy. Claim that the question is still in doubt because of this flimsy evidence. Repeat as often as necessary.

Medical malpractice insurance companies use the Flat Earth method as well. Their premise is that the United States court system is simply overrun with frivolous medical malpractice suits. Anybody who walks into the hospital can go to the courthouse and sue an honest doctor for millions of dollars. Why, there must be hundreds of thousands of frivolous medical malpractice cases going on at this very moment. And here are some of our experts to prove it.

Of course, none of this is true. All you have to do is look at the actual numbers, all of which are easily available.  Nobody is getting rich off of medical malpractice suits, and there aren’t hundreds of thousands of them, whether they are viewed as “frivolous” or not. And considering the expense of putting a medical malpractice case through court, an attorney would have to be willing to throw money away to attempt to try a case with no merit.

But never mind the facts, say the malpractice insurance companies. The earth is flat. Those numbers are stilted and fake. The real numbers (our numbers) are skyrocketing. All the cases are frivolous. Won’t someone in the government step in and help us?

Aside from merely pretending to believe what the Flat Earth Society actually does believe, another key difference is that medical malpractice insurance companies are able to get others to believe them as well. Hundreds of state and federal legislators believe, despite all the evidence and numbers to the contrary, that there is a medical malpractice crisis that needs to be regulated. There are now incredibly restrictive laws that favor the insurance companies rather than the injured patient in almost every state in America.  Sadly, none of this will come out until the victims stories are told one by one.

Fortunately, Maryland, D.C. and Virginia are not under the draconian restrictions that exist in Texas. There are some obstacles here, such as caps on pain and suffering, but fortunately they are relatively minor compared to Texas. As experienced medical malpractice lawyers, we are well versed in the obstacles that have been placed in the way of the injured. But bear in mind that the Flat Earth mindset is working for medical malpractice insurance companies. It can work in the state houses in Richmond and Annapolis and it can certainly work on Capitol Hill. We would urge you to contact your state or federal representative and remind them that despite what they might have heard, the earth is still round.

Greenberg and Bederman is a Washington DC Metropolitan area-based medical malpractice firm. We are currently offering legal assistance to anyone in the Washington, D.C. area who has been injured due to the negligence of a doctor or other medical professional. If you or a loved one has been a victim of medical malpractice in Maryland, Virginia or Washington, D.C, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

Believe it or not, it seems that the truth is the exact opposite of that claim. We are getting this information from a study that was published in 2006 by the American College of Emergency Physicians. While we realize that the study is five years old, what makes this study important is that it gives grades in two categories. The first would be quality and availability of care, and the second is what is called “liability environment.” “Liability environment” means the extent to which emergency room physicians are legally liable for damages. If there are caps and other restrictions in place in that particular state, the state is more likely to get an A or a B. If there are few or no restrictions, the state is likely to get a D or an F.

So here are some interesting results from the two-category grading system used by ACEP:

                                            Access to Care                          Liability Environment

District of Columbia                    A+                                                     F

Pennsylvania                               A                                                        F

Massachusetts                             A                                                        D

Maine                                          A                                                        D

Rhode Island                               A                                                        F

Ohio                                            A-                                                       D

Connecticut                                 A-                                                       F

As you can see, all of these states have a liability grade of either D or F. As far as the ACEP is concerned, these states are terrible places to practice medicine. There are either no caps on damages or the caps are on the higher end of the spectrum. There are no so-called “good Samaritan laws” or any other form of immunity for emergency room workers. Yet when you look over at the Access to Care categories, where you would expect to see equivalent bad grades, all you can see are a row of A’s. This means that there are plenty of emergency room workers, low waiting times and a high quality of care received. This goes directly against the standard argument of tort-reformers and insurance companies. There has been no exodus of emergency room physicians due to their fear of being sued.

So what do you think happens if you take a look at the other end of the spectrum? What is the quality of care like when the doctors (and insurance companies) are protected by caps and immunities?

                                            Access to Care                          Liability Environment

Texas                                          D+                                                    A+

California                                   C                                                       A+

Montana                                    C+                                                      A

Nevada                                       D+                                                     A

South Carolina                           C                                                       B+

Georgia                                      D+                                                     B

Colorado                                    C+                                                     B-

Again, we see the exact opposite of what tort reformers and insurance companies expect you to see. No fear of lawsuits, but no real spike in the amount of doctors or the quality of medical care.

Since we very much doubt that any of the tort reformers will give any sort of explanation for these findings, we would like to venture one. Medical malpractice lawsuits do not exist simply to make people money. They exist to help people who have been injured by the mistakes of doctors receive some sort of compensation. They also exist to help keep doctors on top of their game. If there are no consequences for bad medicine, bad medicine will thrive. Look at the doctors in Texas. They have no fear of being sued, so why bother going that extra mile? Why bother double checking? Why bother taking a second to make sure that the diagnosis is correct? What’s the worst that could happen?

Nothing will happen to the doctors, so the patients are on their own.

Greenberg and Bederman is a Maryland-based Medical Malpractice law firm. Our main office in Silver Spring allows us to serve the entire Washington, D.C. area, as well as Baltimore, Maryland. If you or a loved one in Washington, D.C, Virginia or Maryland has been injured due to the actions of a doctor, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

Treating someone who is deep in the throes of mental illness can be a daunting task. In the first place, one of the chief hurdles is the frame of reference of the victim. A person suffering from insanity will adamantly swear that there is nothing wrong with him. An additional problem in treating the mentally ill is that our for-profit medical system makes treatment cost prohibitive. An insane person can’t hold a job, so he has no money, so he has no health insurance, so he can’t see a doctor, so he can’t get the treatment or prescription drugs that he needs, and his condition gets worse and worse. It’s a fairly vicious cycle.

When someone who suffers from mental illness is fortunate enough to have the resources to get medical treatment, he or she relies almost entirely on the skills and professionalism of the psychiatrist. It’s the psychiatrist who determines the form of the illness, it’s the psychiatrist who determines how severe the illness is, and it’s the psychiatrist who determines what course of treatment to take. And while any medical doctor can make a mistake, a psychiatrist is the only medical doctor whose mistakes can get people who are not the patient hurt or killed.

Here is an example:

ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia's top court is allowing the family of a man charged with stabbing his mother to death during a psychotic rage to file a medical malpractice lawsuit against his psychiatrist.

The lawsuit claims Dr. Derek Johnson O'Brien committed medical malpractice when he ordered two of Victor Bruscato's medications be discontinued.

The Georgia Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Monday that a jury should decide the lawsuit brought by Bruscato's family in Gwinnett County. The ruling settled a debate about whether the lawsuit should go forward that had divided Georgia courts.

Authorities say Bruscato smashed his mother in the head with a battery charger and then stabbed her 72 times.

It would be one thing if this very sick man had not received any treatment whatsoever and then committed this crime. But the fact is the doctor involved knowingly altered an effective course of treatment which resulted in his patient’s psychosis getting worse. It would be hard to imagine that Dr. O’Brien had no inkling of what his patient was capable of, and why he simply cut off two medications in his patient’s treatment regimen without at least looking for substitutes is beyond our understanding.

When most people think of medical malpractice, they think of instruments being left in a body cavity after surgery, or a doctor who doesn’t recognize an obvious diagnosis when it is staring him in the face. But psychiatrists are medical doctors, too. They went to med school, they took gross anatomy, they did their internships, and they passed their medical boards. They are just as capable of medical malpractice as a surgeon or regular doctor. And as we said before, their mistakes can have consequences that go way beyond just the patient.

Greenberg and Bederman is a Maryland medical malpractice law firm that serves the entire Washington, D.C. and Baltimore area. We are currently offering legal counsel to those who have suffered severe injuries due to the negligence  of a doctor, surgeon, nurse or psychiatrist, contact a Greenberg & Bederman lawyer for a free consultation. 

It is a sad state of affairs when you can find more information about the people you hire to hang your drywall than you can about the person who will be doing your bypass surgery. For one thing, the consequences of utilizing the wrong doctor can be life threatening. And when it comes to medical malpractice, it’s the repeat offenders that you have to watch out for.

Before they locked the public out of the NPDB, a group called Public Citizen took a look at the records and determined that of all the cases of medical malpractice that resulted in verdicts or settlements, about 50% of those instances of medical malpractice were committed by only about 5% of the doctors. In other words, there are a few bad doctors out there, but they happen to be really bad. Since 1990, about 4.8% of practicing doctors have had two or more medical malpractice cases go against them. 1.7% of those doctors have made three or more malpractice cases, and combined this 1.7% accounts for a little over a quarter of all medical malpractice payouts.

If your doctor or surgeon was part of the 1.7%, wouldn’t you want to know? If you had a surgery scheduled, wouldn’t you want to know if the person cutting you open had a history of medical malpractice, particularly if they had made three or more medical malpractice payouts? One malpractice payout can be considered an anomaly. Two would make us suspicious. Three or more is a sure sign of someone we would question before going under this person’s care.

Here are just a few of the doctors and surgeons whose records have been sealed from public view (all of these were taken directly from the Public Citizen report):

• Physician Number 94358, licensed in New Jersey, settled or lost 33 medical malpractice suits involving improper diagnosis or treatment between 1988 and 1993, inflicting over $400,000 in disability costs to his patients. This doctor has not been disciplined by authorities in New Jersey.

• Physician Number 64625, licensed in Pennsylvania, paid 24 medical malpractice claims involving improper performance of surgery between 1989 and 2001. Damages to this doctor’s patients exceeded $370,000. This doctor has never been disciplined by Pennsylvania authorities.

• Physician Number 125457, while licensed in Nevada, paid 5 malpractice claims involving improper performance of surgery between 1995 and 1997, with damages totaling $2.3 million. Recent news accounts have reported that doctors are fleeing from Las Vegas to other states to avoid high malpractice insurance premiums. Physician 125457 was ahead of the curve in moving his practice to California. There he paid another 8 malpractice claims with damages exceeding $7.5 million. This doctor has never been disciplined by authorities in either Nevada or California.

• Physician Number 37949, licensed in Texas, settled or lost 13 medical malpractice suits involving improper treatment or improper performance of surgery between 1990 and 1997. Two of the suits involved the same allegation—a foreign body left in the patient during surgery. Damages to this doctor’s patients exceeded $2 million. This doctor has never been disciplined by authorities in Texas.

What is sticking out at us here (aside from the obvious multiple cases of medical malpractice) is that none of these doctors were disciplined. Not by the American Medical Association, not by their state medical boards, not by anyone. Thanks to the Department of Health and Human Services for closing our eyes so we can’t tell if our doctor is one of the “fortunate” who has something to hide.

Tort reform organizations like to use the word “lawsuit lottery,” as if malpractice victims were actually quite lucky to be able to get injured by their doctor and sue them. We can tell you with great certainty that there is no such thing as a “lawsuit lottery,” as every single one of our medical malpractice clients would rather have their lives back to normal rather than fight through a multi-year malpractice trial. So no, there is not a “lawsuit lottery.” But because the National Practitioner Data Bank has been shuttered, there is now a “physician lottery.” Who knows who you might get when you book a surgery? Who knows what you might get when your doctor writes a prescription? Your doctor or surgeon might be the model of competence and professionalism, but then again, he might not be. As of right now, you have no way of knowing.

Greenberg and Bederman is a medical malpractice injury firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to people in Maryland, Washington, D.C. or Virginia who have been injured due to the negligent actions of a doctor, surgeon or other medical professional. If you or a loved one has been injured because of medical malpractice, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free consultation.

Believe it or not, this is what’s happening in Texas right now.

Depending on your perspective, Texas is either a “great” or “terrifying” place in which to receive medical care. If you happen to be a doctor or insurance company, it’s great. If you happen to be a patient, it most certainly is not the best. Under the guise of “tort reform,” people in Texas who seek emergency room treatment have essentially no legal recourse if the doctor treating them makes an error. The fine print of the 2003 tort reform law in Texas states that unless an emergency room physician acted with “willful and wanton negligence,” no victim of emergency room malpractice is eligible for civil damages at all. This means that it has to be proven that an emergency room physician meant to make a mistake, which is about the biggest legal oxymoron we have ever seen. On top of that, the main thrust of the 2003 tort reform capped non-economic damages at $250,000 for medical liability, which might seem like a lot, but is actually about what it costs to get a medical malpractice case through the court system in the event that a malpractice insurance company wants to settle. (They very rarely do.) So what you have in Texas is a system where people who have been clearly injured due to medical negligence are unable to bring their cases to court, either because they were injured in the emergency room and are therefore ineligible for civil damages, or because the restrictions on compensation make it financially impossible for plaintiff’s attorneys to take the case.

This has made life great for insurance companies in Texas. It has also made life great for doctors, who have had their chances of being brought to court dramatically reduced, even if they have committed medical malpractice. By limiting the options of what victims of medical malpractice can do after they have been hurt, doctors are free to practice their profession without the fear of being sued, and malpractice insurance companies are free to insure doctors without the fear of having to pay malpractice claims.

So now that Texas has essentially no consequences for medical professionals who make mistakes, guess what happens? The standard of care drops, for starters. And doctors, nurses and administrators start taking advantage of the legal protections in new and clever ways.

From the Associated Press:

The federal government said after an inspection at Parkland Memorial Hospital found conditions that were a "serious threat" to patient safety, the public hospital will not be able to participate in the Medicare program without coming up with correction plans.

Among the reasons for this potential removal of Medicare money are violations of infection prevention protocol, as well as a practice of moving the majority of patients to the emergency room to be screened, regardless of whether their condition required urgent care or not. The reason for that is probably to cover all the bases in the event that someone screws up. Remember, emergency room equals no liability. So if you check into a hospital in Texas with a manageable and minor ailment, don’t be surprised if they make you go down to the emergency room first.

So what do the patients in Texas get out of all of these protections for doctors and insurance companies? Not much. Rather than focusing on actual instances of malpractice, Texas decided to focus on restricting or removing the legal options of people after they have been hurt, which will do nothing to lower the rate of medical malpractice, wrong diagnoses, surgical errors, prescription errors or hospital infections. If anything, it would allow doctors, surgeons and nurses to practice with less care and concern, mainly because the consequences for negligent or sloppy medical care have been removed.

The next study that needs to be performed is to learn whether the cap on medical damages has resulted in lower medical malpractice premiums for Texas doctors and healthcare providers.

This is something to keep in mind in the event that any legislators in Virginia or Maryland point to Texas as an example of the “good” that tort reform can do.

Greenberg and Bederman is a medical malpractice injury firm located in the Washington, D.C. area. We are currently offering legal assistance to those who have been injured due to surgical errors, wrong diagnoses, hospital infections or other preventable forms of medical malpractice. If you or a loved one in Maryland, Virginia or D.C. has been injured due to the negligence of a doctor or medical professional, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free consultation today. 

For instance, let’s say you are a public school teacher and get severely injured due to the actions of an enormous corporation. Would you like to run the risk of paying the law firm that this corporation hires to defend itself in the event that you end up losing your case? Aside from the fact that there is no such thing as a “slam dunk” lawsuit, corporations often drag cases out in order to make lowball settlement offers more appealing. Do you have any idea how much that would cost? Probably a lot more than it would cost to make you whole after your injury.

It is already difficult enough for people in Texas to access the courts in the first place. Tort reform laws for medical malpractice have essentially made it impossible for low income individuals to enter the courtroom. With strict damage limits on non-economic damages, malpractice lawyers (most of whom operate on a contingency fee basis) can’t afford to bring these cases to court. After court costs, hiring expert witnesses, and the general labor of bringing a case to trial, most attorneys would end up losing money on the case. And a cap on non-economic damages might not bother you if you happen to play first base for the Washington Nationals, but if you are like the vast majority of the rest of us, non-economic damages are a crucial part of an injury case. Plus, if you happen to get injured due to the actions of emergency room personnel, the only way they can be found guilty in Texas is if they admit that they meant to hurt you. And who in their right minds would do that?

So now that doctors (and their insurance companies) are squared away and protected in ways that don’t extend to their patients, Governor Perry has decided to make sure that the rest of the folks who need the least protection get the most of it. The code word is “small businesses,” which is actually just short hand for “large businesses.” Basically, it doesn’t matter how much damage they do. There are now a series of safety nets in Texas that allows businesses to do whatever they want, regardless of the consequences. I mean, what are you going to do if you get hurt? Sue them? Are you sure you want to do that? What if you lose? And if you win? You might be able to maybe keep your house with the winnings. But it will be back to business as usual for them.

It’s worth mentioning that in the press release, there is plenty of talk of judges and defendants, and how this new legislation will make everything easier for them. But there is not one mention of the rights of plaintiffs, injury victims or victims of medical malpractice. Mentioning injury victims wouldn’t be very popular with this bill.

Greenberg and Bederman is a personal injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to victims of medical malpractice in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. If you or a loved one has been a victim of a surgical error, wrong diagnosis, prescription error or any other form of medical malpractice, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free consultation. 

The overall premise of the article in the News-Sentinel is that even though Ms. Heath received a multi-million dollar settlement, she is still struggling to make ends meet. Tort reform organizations like to refer to multi-million dollar settlements like Ms. Heath’s as “jackpot justice” or “winning the lawsuit lottery,” but from our perspective (and certainly Ms. Heath’s,) it doesn’t seem like she could consider herself a “winner” of much of anything. What she received for her injuries was enough to cover some of her medical issues, but certainly not all of them, and this will last only as long as the money from the settlement does. There are no mansions, sports cars or trips to Bermuda in the equation here.

Also mentioned in the article is a piece of legislation that passed the State Judiciary Committee in Tennessee last week:

“Last week the House Judiciary Committee approved a bill proposed by Gov. Bill Haslam that would cap damages at $1 million in cases involving serious spinal cord injuries, severe burns or the death of a parent of minor children.”

If Ms. Heath is barely able to keep her head above water after a multi-million dollar settlement, how do you think those who have suffered severe spinal cord injuries are going to do on $1 million or less? You can also consider that many settlements don’t come all at once. They come in payments often spread out over ten or twenty years. If it’s a million dollars spread out over twenty years, that’s $50,000 a year before taxes, and significantly less after. This would be manageable if you happen to be a healthy person, but what if you happen to be confined to a wheelchair and are in a more or less constant precarious state of health? How does your financial picture look now?

For that matter, how do you think things are going for injury victims who live in states where the damage cap is $250,000? How do you think those “justice jackpot winners” are able to pay for their needed care with $250,000? We would guess that they aren’t doing so well.

On the other side of the coin, all of those insurance companies that benefit from damage caps are doing quite well. So what we are seeing put into place all over the country is help for those who don’t need it and punishment for those who do need it. To us, that makes absolutely no sense at all.

Greenberg and Bederman is apersonal injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to people who have been injured due to no fault of their own. This includes people who have been injured in car accidents, injuries due to medical malpractice or surgical errors, pedestrian and bicycle accidents and injuries on public transit. If you or a loved one has been injured due to the negligence of others, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

There are quite a few things wrong with these assumptions. In the first place, we have yet to see medical malpractice insurance companies dramatically lower their rates in states where these caps have been put in place. Nor have patients who have been injured by their doctors suddenly stopped filing lawsuits. It seems to us that the only people who are helped by caps on damages in medical malpractice cases are the medical malpractice insurance companies, and considering that malpractice insurers are more profitable than 99% of all Fortune 500 companies, it doesn’t seem like they need much help at all.

Another troubling element about these caps is that they seem to favor those who are financially well off but completely disregards the suffering of those who are not. Economic damages basically compensate you for the amount of money that you lost due to the negligent actions of your doctor or surgeon. This can be a significant amount if you happen to be a stock broker, airline pilot, or if you happen to be a doctor yourself. That amount can be even more if the actions of the doctor or surgeon prevent you from returning to your job. But if you happen to be a retail worker or if you happen to work in a restaurant, the amount of compensation won’t amount to much, particularly once your insurance company goes through its usual round of claim rejections. So for those of us who don’t make millions of dollars a year, non-economic compensation is particularly important. Ultimately, what these caps do is make it incredibly hard for malpractice injury victims to collect for damages suffered as a result of negligence. Plaintiffs have to hire attorneys if they’ve been wrongfully injured, and these attorneys work on a contingency basis. Often expensive expert witnesses have to be hired. If there is a strict cap on non-economic damages, quite often the process of bringing a malpractice case to court becomes financially impossible. So while this legislation would not specifically make it illegal to file a medical malpractice case, it might certainly make it impossible financially. A malpractice suit would become the equivalent of buying a Lamborghini. Theoretically, anyone is able to buy one. But there are very few of us who can actually afford to do so.

The memorandum for today’s hearing gives us the inevitable mention of “frivolous lawsuits,” which to us is simply corporate-speak for “lawsuits that do not benefit us directly.” Coincidentally, today we also read a story from Northern Virginia Daily which gives a little more perspective on the sort of cases that would essentially no longer exist in America if H.R. 5 were to become law.

A 29 year old woman in Winchester, Virginia was suffering from persistent diarrhea and went to see a doctor. The doctor decided to perform a colonoscopy. When she was given a preparation medication before the colonoscopy took place, she had a great deal of difficulty handling it. She was suffering from nausea, abdominal pain and cramping. Rather than ascertain the cause of this pain, the doctor simply gave her Demoral and went ahead with the colonoscopy. The end result of this was that the woman had her colon perforated, which only added to her already existing medical problems. The woman came very close to dying.

If the allegations in the official complaint are correct, the doctor failed the patient in a number of ways, and her injuries are extensive. But let’s say that these medical malpractice caps are put into place. What are her options? She could still sue the doctor, of course. But what does she do for a living? Does she manage a bank? Is she an executive with Lockheed Martin? Is she a housewife? Is she a waitress? With H.R. 5 as established law of the land, that could matter more than the extent of her injuries,whether or not the doctor was guilty of negligence.

Greenberg and Bederman is a medical malpractice law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to those who have been injured due to the negligence or incompetence of a medical professional. We have helped hundreds of medical malpractice victims in Maryland, D.C. and Virginia receive fair treatment from the court system. If you or a loved one has been injured due to an instance of medical malpractice,  contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free medical malpractice legal consultation.

All of these numbers were put together in a very interesting New York Timesarticle, which can be somewhat uncomfortable to read. The article outlines what is essentially a cost/benefit analysis where they determine whether or not new regulations on industry would be financially feasible. For instance, let’s say that there is a new technology that would prevent a certain type of accident, but it is an accident that happens relatively rarely. Federal agencies would then take their version of monetary value of a human life, multiply it by the amount of times that particular accident happens, and then compare that number to the cost of forcing industries to implement that technology. This is not to say that this formula is the arbiter of whether regulation gets put into place, but if the cost of implementing regulation is much cheaper than the cost of lost human life, it certainly makes a clear argument for enacting that regulation. The howls of protest that come from businesses and industries of all types are quite interesting, particularly because they are placed in the awkward position of having to haggle over what they truly believe a human life is worth. After all, the more human life is valued financially, the more likely they are to have to obey regulations that could cost them money.

As mentioned in the article, one group that is very much against increasing the value of human life is the Chamber of Commerce, who are doing everything they can to encourage more Congressional control over regulations in general. If you wish to know exactly how much they think a human life is worth, all you have to do is take a look at the non-economic damage caps that are in place in quite a few states. These caps are in place largely because of the legislative influence of the Chamber of Commerce.

Alabama, for instance, believes that a human life is worth a maximum of $400,000. Alaska believes a human life is worth $250,000. Maryland is a bit more generous, with a current cap of $680,000. Virginia believes human life is worth $2 million. And there are several other states that have determined that if you subtract what you are worth financially, then your life in general is worth significantly less than what the federal government has determined it is worth.

We have a hard time accepting caps of any sort, regardless of whether they are on the high or low ends of the spectrum. We have a problem with caps primarily because we have a serious problem with the idea of a predetermined monetary value placed on human life. But we would at least admit that the amounts that the federal agencies use for their arithmetic seem reasonable, even if the industries that fight against regulation do not. And if you are going to place a strict monetary value on a human life, wouldn’t it seem decent to have it on the higher side rather the lower? In many of the states where these caps are in place, the compensation levels can barely be called compensation, and actually price many injury victims directly out of the courtroom. That’s fine for the insurance companies, and its fine for the businesses, but for people who get injured due to the negligence of someone else, “equal justice under the law” is a theory rather than a fact.

Greenberg and Bederman is a personal injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to those who have been injured in car or truck accidents, pedestrian or bicycle accidents, medical malpractice, product liability or premises liability. If you or a loved one in Virginia, Maryland or D.C. has been injured in an accident due the actions of someone else,  contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free legal consultation.

It is a rare day indeed where natives of this city can point to a recommendation by a committee or a piece of legislation and say with great certainty that they will immediately feel the effects of it if it becomes a reality. But recently, we heard something in President Obama’s State of the Union that caused us a great deal of concern. As injury lawyers, we have seen firsthand how “caps” on medical malpractice damages have benefited insurance companies, but have left the actual victims of surgical errors and medical negligence with far less than they should have received in compensation for their injuries.

Here is the actual line in the speech, as reported in the Los Angeles Times:

"I'm willing to look at other ideas to bring down costs," besides repeal of his health care bill, Obama said, including "medical malpractice reform to rein in frivolous lawsuits."

We have a real problem with the term “frivolous lawsuits,” particularly when it is coupled with “medical malpractice reform.” In the first place, it advances the fiction that anyone who brings legal action against a doctor or other medical professional is “faking it,” or is looking to be rewarded for nothing. This is absolutely not the case. Victims of medical malpractice are people who have placed their health and trust in the hands of doctors, surgeons, nurses, pharmacists and other medical professionals, and have had that trust violated. And we aren’t talking about mere inconveniences. When we say “medical malpractice,” we mean severe and often life-threatening injuries. We mean limbs that have been mistakenly amputated. We mean patients who have been given the wrong blood type. We mean pharmacists who have misread the prescription. We mean doctors who gave a rushed and thoroughly disinterested diagnosis that resulted in real harm being done to the patient. The idea that the people who get seriously hurt due to instances like this are engaged in frivolity of any kind is disingenuous and insulting.

The solution that almost always accompanies talk of medical malpractice reform comes in the form of “caps” on non-economic damages. This means that an arbitrary and unrealistic ceiling is placed on the amount of money that victims of medical malpractice can receive for pain and suffering. In other words, there is a strict limit on the amount of compensation that they can receive for anything about the injury that did not directly cost them money.

While this might seem reasonable, consider what the end effects of these caps have done to the rights of victims. In Texas, for example, cases involving birth injuries or instances where the baby died due to the mistakes of doctors have virtually disappeared. They have not disappeared because mistakes by the doctors have suddenly stopped. They have disappeared because since infants aren’t money-makers, the only real compensation that a grieving family can receive is around $200,000. With this being the limit to the compensation, it becomes very easy for malpractice insurance companies to price plaintiffs out of the courtroom. All they have to do is file for delays and hire more expert witnesses than the plaintiff can afford to match, and all of a sudden the whole court case would end up costing more than the victims could possibly win in damages. When victims and their attorneys are facing this economic reality, often the cases are never even filed.

These caps do not benefit anyone except the people who need it least. Medical malpractice insurance is a multi-billion dollar business, and profits are soaring. We have no idea why President Obama seems to think that protecting these astronomical profits is more important than protecting the rights of medical malpractice injury victims. Perhaps it is a concession of some sort. But if these caps become a built-in part of Obama’s health care reform, “tough luck” will be the only advice available for most malpractice victims.

Greenberg and Bederman is a medical malpractice law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to those in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. who have been injured due to instances of medical malpractice. This includes surgical errors, wrong diagnosis, pharmaceutical errors, and unnecessary delay of treatment. If you or a loved one has been injured due to the actions of a doctor, surgeon or other medical professional, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

A recent study in the Netherlands backs this up:

In the current study, the researchers identified the main reasons for errors in 294 successful claims related to surgeries from 2004 to 2005. They then compared those to the items on a comprehensive surgical checklist called SURPASS, which is now used in several hospitals in the Netherlands.

It should be mentioned that this checklist is not an immensely complicated document. It includes simple things like making sure that the procedure is scheduled correctly, and that all of the needed instruments are available, or even marking which side of the patients body is going to be operated on. It’s not unlike the pre-flight checklist that a pilot and co-pilot go through before they take off.

When the researchers compared the successful medical malpractice cases to the items on the checklist, they found that 29% of the malpractice cases were directly related to something that was left off of the checklist. It wasn’t a daring surgical procedure that went wrong. It wasn’t a random action of the body that was blamed on the doctor. It was an easily preventable mistake that could have been prevented if someone had taken the time to make sure that the procedure was properly set up. It was a lack of communication among the hospital staff. It was misread handwriting. It was a scalpel that wasn’t available.

Since patients can’t be expected to handle these things themselves, the responsibility for all of this lands directly on the hospital staff. If a patient or the family of a patient comes to us and explains that their loved one was killed or injured because of a breach of the standard of care, and this was something easily preventable, it’s hardly “abuse of the system” if we try to hold the people responsible accountable.

According to the article, only 25% of American hospitals use any kind of pre-op checklist at all. And while we absolutely dispute that the rate of medical malpractice cases in America is somehow overblown or unsustainable, we have to wonder what the results would be if more hospitals made some sort of pre-op checklist a mandatory part of their practices. After all, medical malpractice cases aren’t filed for fun. They don’t fall out of the sky. They happen because of preventable mistakes, and it appears that by using these checklists, doctors and surgeons all over the country could lower the amount of those preventable mistakes by a considerable margin.

Greenberg and Bederman is a medical malpractice injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to those who have been injured by a doctor, surgeon or other medical professional. If you or a loved one in Washington, D.C, Virginia or Maryland (including Baltimore) has been injured due to medical malpractice or surgical errors, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

As or right now, people in Connecticut are not able to make informed decisions about their health care; specifically because the state’s online medical database is omitting medical malpractice information:

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — The Connecticut Public Health Department's online doctor database frequently omits information about past malpractice payments, making it difficult for patients to make informed decisions.

The Hartford Courant reports Monday that there are more than 100 doctors on the site whose malpractice cases are missing. That's about one out of every six who have made payments in recent years for harming or killing patients who appear to have clean records.

If you happen to live in Connecticut, and you happen to be choosing a doctor or a surgeon, wouldn’t you want to know if this person has made a certain number of mistakes? Particularly if the number of doctors who have made serious or life-ending mistakes is one out of every six doctors? Those are about the same odds that you get with Russian roulette.

To be sure, you shouldn’t make the assumption that if your doctor has one malpractice payout in a twenty year career that he is a bad doctor. In fact, if a doctor had that kind of record we would be the first in line to make an appointment with him. But if a doctor has a seriously spotty record, with multiple lawsuits and multiple mistakes and multiple unnecessary patient deaths, wouldn’t you want to know that before you selected him to do the surgery? Wouldn’t you find that to be a crucial piece of information? We certainly would.

We aren’t sure why this information is being left off the new website. When they made the initial switch to the new website, they estimated that the profiles would be complete and updated (meaning that the medical malpractice information would be posted) by April of 2010, but then that date switched to June, then August, then October, and they finally just gave up giving an estimated date. We would hope that at some point in the near future they would update the site with all of the relevant information, because in the meantime, there are some doctors on the list who are having their professional histories whitewashed quite thoroughly.

For instance, there is one surgeon in Connecticut who failed to control bleeding in a patient who was known to have difficulties with blood clotting. There was also one doctor who had lost or settled four medical malpractice suits in the past seven years. Not to mention a doctor who was hit with a $36 million verdict due to a botched Caesarian section birth which led to the child having cerebral palsy.

Again, we think these are the sort of things that patients should know about before selecting a doctor. It’s a pity that Connecticut doesn’t feel the same way.

Greenberg and Bederman is a medical malpractice injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland, and we offer legal assistance to victims of medical malpractice in Washington, D.C, Virginia and Maryland. We have helped victims of surgical errors, wrong diagnosis, prescription errors, hospital infections and injuries due to unnecessary delay of treatment.  If you or a loved one has been injured due to the negligence of a doctor, surgeon or other medical professional, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

But it absolutely is in Texas. If you get treated by an emergency room doctor down there, and he makes a critical mistake, essentially all he has to do is say “I didn’t mean to,” and that keeps the victim of that mistake from collecting any damages, regardless of how bad the damage is.

The fine print in the law that capped non-economic damages at $250,000 had special protections for emergency room doctors, each of whom are now protected from penalties in court unless it can be proven that their negligence was “willful and wanton.” That phrase essentially means that whatever you did, you did so knowing that it would harm other people. And you are more likely to find Bigfoot riding a unicorn than any doctor anywhere who will admit to that.

Here is a real life example as to how this protection has further victimized people who have been injured by doctor’s mistakes. A woman with a history of blood clotting went to the emergency room of a San Antonio hospital because of leg pain. The ER doctor there sent her home with a diagnosis of “bilateral leg pain,” and advised her to follow up with her primary care physician. Three days later, she was in a different hospital, this time with tissue death in her legs and kidney failure. A filter that she had had placed in one of the veins in her heart was clogged up, which led to incredibly bad clotting.  Doctors had to amputate both of her legs.

Ultimately, the doctor who initially saw her and told her to follow up with her primary care physician must bear some responsibility. He didn’t ask the right questions, or he didn’t take the time to look into her case as thoroughly as he should have, and as a result this woman is a double amputee. But since he didn’t do any of these things on purpose, he gets a pass.

When you read about this case and others like it in Texas, you almost want to scream to the heavens. “Of COURSE he didn’t do it on purpose! He’s not a monster! He’s simplynegligent!” Medical malpractice suits aren’t filed because lawyers hate doctors. Medical malpractice suits are filed because sometimes doctors make easily preventable mistakes, and these mistakes have serious consequences. No lawyer would make the argument that a doctor gave the wrong diagnosis just to be mean. The argument is not “Did he mean to do it?” The argument is “Could have this been prevented if reasonable standards and practices had been used?” But the fine print in the laws of Texas essentially shifts all of the arguments into unwinnable territory for anyone who walks into an emergency room and is the victim of a doctor’s mistake.

These laws were not put into place to make things better for doctors or patients. They were put into place so malpractice insurance companies could continue to have profitable years. Call us crazy, but we think the financial health of an insurer should be the last thing on the list of priorities when you walk into a hospital.

Greenberg and Bederman is a medical malpractice law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to people in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. who have been injured due to the negligence or incompetence of doctors or surgeons. If you have been injured due to the actions of a doctor, contact a medical malpractice attorney for a free malpractice legal consultation today.

There are many things that don’t make any sense at all about this argument. In the first place, it completely misrepresents the relationship between hospitals and insurance companies. If it were true that insurance companies were contractually and legally bound to pay for every single healthcare expenditure made on a patient’s behalf, then perhaps the tort reformers would have a point. But insurance companies most certainly are not contractually and legally bound to pay for everything. They have agreed to pay for what they deem to be “medically necessary”, and not that which they deem to be “medically unnecessary.”  And “medically unnecessary” can mean quite a few things. In fact, “medically unnecessary” can be and has been applied to almost every single pill, bandage, test and procedure that exists underneath the roof of any hospital in America.

Insurers have refused to pay for aspirin, bandages, calcium pills, ambulance rides, helicopter trips to the emergency room for patients at deaths door, broken limbs, lab tests, surgeries both major and minor, limb or finger reattachments, meals, or quite literally anything medical that you can imagine. And these decisions are almost never made by the reasoned decisions of uninterested and unbiased medical professionals. They are made by insurance claims adjusters using insurance company software to guide their decisions of what is and what is not medically necessary.

In short, insurance companies do not simply receive an invoice and then meekly write out a check. They say “no,” and leave it to either the hospital or the patient to convince them to say otherwise. If the patient or the hospital fails to do so, the hospital simply bills the patient. So the idea of hospitals overloading patients with unnecessary tests to either avoid the lawyers or just to get rich is not an accurate one. No insurance company that we have ever faced in court simply acquiesced to anything. So it is very doubtful that they would simply fork over money for an MRI given to a patient with a headache.

This is another example of insurance companies inventing a “crisis” in order to create new laws that will only benefit them, even as they claim that these new laws will benefit everyone else. The “crisis” of “preventive medicine” putting an undue burden on insurance companies does not exist. Nor did the “crisis” involving medical malpractice, in which doctors were supposedly being run out of business due to a sudden increase in lawsuits.

The invariable solution to all of these invented panics is always “caps,” or arbitrary, unfair and unrealistic limits on the amount of money that victims of injuries or medical malpractice can receive. These caps will not prevent doctors from running unnecessary tests and they won’t cause medical malpractice rates to drop or raise or lower the amount of malpractice cases that are filed, settled, won or lost every year, and they will ultimately do nothing except benefit medical malpractice insurance companies, which are the one part of this equation that doesn’t need the help.

Greenberg and Bederman is amedical malpractice injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We have helped malpractice victims in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C. for 25 years. Our practice areas include surgical errors, missed or late diagnosis cases, prescription errors, birth injuries, and many other forms of medical malpractice. If you or a loved one has been injured due to what you believe to be medical malpractice, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free legal consultation.

The way that these corporations are going about it is essentially the same way that malpractice insurance companies went about getting their protections. In 8 easy steps, here is the process:

1.       Drastically raise rates or prices on your products or services with the cooperation of your direct competitiors. “We’re sorry, but we have to charge you twice as much this month.”

2.       Blame the price hike on lawyers. “We get sued so much that the only way we can stay solvent as a business is to increase our rates!”

3.       Find overblown examples of lawsuits and present them as an everyday occurrence. “Remember that Judge who sued the dry cleaner for $50 million? That happens every single day.”

4.       Focus on an aspect of the judicial system that is not advantageous to you and pretend that this aspect affects everyone much more than it actually does. “Innocent, hardworking Americans all live under the threat of runaway, out of control punitive damages.”

5.        Claim that our judicial system is “in crisis,” utilize public relations, media outlets and lobbyists to hammer home the idea that something has to be done. “The National Lawsuit Crisis is making it impossible for hard working Americans to do anything. You can’t go get the newspaper without somebody suing you for punitive damages these days.”

6.       Lobby pro-business politicians for a legislative fix: “America cannot survive unless we enact strict limits on punitive damages.”

7.       Get caps on damages legislation pushed through sympathetic state assemblies. “The Americans for Liberty, Justice and Freedom Act has saved the country from utter ruin.”

8.        Celebrate the protections this legislation has provided your business by reducing your rates by about half of the amount you increased them initially. “See? Our rates have dropped! The system works!”

This is not an exaggeration. Medical malpractice companies pulled this stunt in the early 2000’s almost to perfection, and to this day there are still non-economic damage caps in multiple states. And while the rates have gone down, in many cases they haven’t dropped down to pre-“crisis” levels.

Before you start believing the tales of woe and horror of innocent, hard working businessmen driven to ruin due to punitive damages, here are a few things you should know.

In the first place, punitive damages are a fairly rare occurrence. It is very difficult to prove that a corporation (or even a person) did something grossly negligent on purpose. For instance, in the current Toyota recall cases, Toyota’s defense will be that they had absolutely no idea that so many of their cars were defective, and the burden of proving that will be on the prosecution. Secondly, in tort cases (injury cases,) only 3% of the tens of thousands of cases that happen every year involve punitive damages.

Nor is every punitive damage verdict an automatic seven figures in the bank account of the plaintiff. Most punitive damages are significantly less. In fact, the median punitive damage award is around $55,000. To be sure, that is a great deal of money if the defendant is a small business owner or private citizen, but when the plaintiff is a multi-billion dollar corporation, it is difficult to muster the sort of sympathy that the tort reform organizations seem to require of you.

So if the average monetary amount of punitive damages is so low, and punitive damages happen so rarely, why is it that corporations and insurers and tort reform organizations are trying to put lids on them? Probably because they know all too well that occasionally, there will be an Exxon Valdez. There will be a BP oil well leak. There will be a Dalkon Shield, or a Vioxx, or a Phen Fen. All of these corporations know that there will inevitably be a faulty product or an easily preventable disaster, but they don’t know when it will happen. So rather than face the music eventually, it’s better to fix the system now.

To understand the nature of punitive damages, you simply have to look at the word. “Punitive” means “to punish.” The most effective way to hurt a corporation is by attacking its wallets. A massive chemical conglomerate may come to the realization that there is a right way and a wrong way to do business if their actions cost them millions of dollars. If there is a “cap” on punitive damages, that cap can simply be factored in to whatever they choose to do. Punitive damages should not be written off as simply a cost of doing business. The amount should not be capped, nor should it be predictable. They exist to remind companies and corporations that their actions have consequences.

Greenberg and Bederman is a Maryland injury law firm. We are currently offering legal help to people who have been injured due to no fault of their own. That includes people in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C. who have been injured in car accidents, injured due to medical malpractice, injured due to environmental or groundwater pollution, or injured due to dangerous and defective pharmaceutical drugs. If you or a loved one has been injured in an accident, contact Greenberg & Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

The reasons that were given for the so-called “medical malpractice crisis” were (and still are) completely debatable. For instance, there was never any sudden onslaught of medical malpractice cases. The level of malpractice cases between 1991 and 2005 either dropped or remained relatively constant, while the amount of money paid out to medical malpractice claimants dropped significantly.

If that was the case, then why were so many medical malpractice insurance companies crying poverty and raising their rates? One study claims that it wasn’t a sudden avalanche of medical malpractice lawsuits or enormous verdicts that caused the rates as much as it was the fact that the medical malpractice insurers’ investments took a beating shortly before the medical malpractice “crisis” began. A poorly performing bond market does not make a very good villain from a PR standpoint, but the idea of “greedy trial lawyers” or the fiction of people winning millions of dollars over a stubbed toe works perfectly. And it worked quite well. There is now a limit on the amount of compensation that a medical malpractice victim can receive in many states, even though there is no such limitations on the amount of damage that a careless or incompetent doctor or surgeon can do. So in some states, it truly does not matter how badly a doctor messes up, or how much that mistake alters or even ends the victims’ life. Medical malpractice insurers have had their interests and profits protected.

The market reflects that change in the fortunes of insurance companies. Most medical malpractice insurance companies are seen as a smart investment, particularly if they only do business in states where there are legal limits to the amount of money that they are responsible for paying out. For instance, Warren Buffett’s investment group Berkshire Hathaway purchased malpractice insurer Medical Protective for $825 million. Mr. Buffett has a long history of making smart investments, and it appears that this purchase was a continuation of that trend. And FPIC purchased Advocate MD for $33 million, despite the fact that Advocate MD was only the fourth largest malpractice insurer in Texas. Since the purchase, FPIC’s shares have done nothing but increase in value. Exactly one year ago, FPIC was trading at $22 a share. Today it’s valued at $36.

The bottom line is that malpractice insurance remains extremely profitable, so much so to the point that the average profit for medical malpractice insurance companies is 31.2%, which is a ridiculously high margin for any business.

Despite these consistent profits and despite the legal system being essentially rigged to ensure that they remain vibrant, you would think that from public statements and lobbying efforts, those medical malpractice insurance companies are a beleaguered minority with wolves at the door. In practically every state legislature and in every session of Congress there are several bills where representatives are demanding more and more restrictions on the liability of medical malpractice companies. In every press release malpractice insurers make it seem like they are just barely hanging on as a business, even as their quarterly reports prove otherwise.

Greenberg and Bederman is a personal injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to people in the Washington, D.C. area who have been injured due to no fault of their own. That includes injury victims in Maryland and Virginia. Our practice areas include car accidents, motorcycle accidents, pedestrian and bicycle accidents, premises liability, defective product injuries, injuries due to pollution and groundwater contamination, and injuries due to surgical errors and other medical malpractice errors, bad diagnoses, delay of treatment and other forms of medical malpractice. If you or a loved one has been injured due to no fault of your own, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

These caps also tie the hands of judges, who might otherwise decide that a victim of medical malpractice has suffered so much that he or she certainly deserves more than the $200,000 or $300,000 that is the limit in states that have these caps.

There are similar policies in place that have also negated the opinions of judges and juries. Many drug cases in this country are decided based on what are called mandatory minimum sentences, which means a uniform standard of punishment for drug related offences. What this means is that a person who is caught with a certain amount of drugs gets a standard prison sentence, regardless of what the circumstances are. If a person who has no criminal record is caught with three ounces of cocaine, he or she would get the exact same prison sentence as a person with multiple prior convictions. Even if the judge or jury thinks that the person convicted deserves a much lighter sentence, the juries’ opinion is meaningless and the judge’s hands are tied. Even if the defendant pleads guilty and co-operates with the police, the sentence would be the same if the defendant clammed up and forced the state to go through a trial that lasted months.  It is justice by rubber stamp, or justice by conversion chart.

These sentencing guidelines and damage caps essentially work under the idea that all of the cases are exactly alike, and therefore any sentences or judgments should be exactly alike. But we can tell you from  experience that no medical malpractice case is identical. There is no set limit of ways for doctors to make mistakes, and there is no set limit of the amount of suffering that a victim of medical malpractice has to go through. It only makes sense that there should be no set amount of compensation for which a medical malpractice victim is eligible.

It is also important to realize that these caps don’t change anything about the practices of doctors. A good and conscientious doctor who  makes an effort not to deviate from the standard of care, or immediately fixes the mistakes that he makes will not alter his habits because his insurance company has less of a financial liability. Doctors do not benefit from damage caps, and patients certainly don’t either. Insurance companies are the only people in this equation with anything to gain here, and why we as a nation have decided to essentially remove the function of juries and judges in order to benefit malpractice insurance companies is beyond us.

Greenberg and Bederman is a medical malpractice injury firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We serve the entire Washington, D.C. and Baltimore area, and that includes Fairfax, Arlington, Alexandria, Prince William County and all of Northern Virginia. If you or a loved one has been injured due to medical malpractice, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

To learn more about our medical malpractice attorney, John Sellinger, please read hisbio, or watch his Youtube video.

These caps also tie the hands of judges, who might otherwise decide that a victim of medical malpractice has suffered so much that he or she certainly deserves more than the $200,000 or $300,000 that is the limit in states that have these caps.

There are similar policies in place that have also negated the opinions of judges and juries. Many drug cases in this country are decided based on what are called mandatory minimum sentences, which means a uniform standard of punishment for drug related offences. What this means is that a person who is caught with a certain amount of drugs gets a standard prison sentence, regardless of what the circumstances are. If a person who has no criminal record is caught with three ounces of cocaine, he or she would get the exact same prison sentence as a person with multiple prior convictions. Even if the judge or jury thinks that the person convicted deserves a much lighter sentence, the juries’ opinion is meaningless and the judge’s hands are tied. Even if the defendant pleads guilty and co-operates with the police, the sentence would be the same if the defendant clammed up and forced the state to go through a trial that lasted months.  It is justice by rubber stamp, or justice by conversion chart.

These sentencing guidelines and damage caps essentially work under the idea that all of the cases are exactly alike, and therefore any sentences or judgments should be exactly alike. But we can tell you from  experience that no medical malpractice case is identical. There is no set limit of ways for doctors to make mistakes, and there is no set limit of the amount of suffering that a victim of medical malpractice has to go through. It only makes sense that there should be no set amount of compensation for which a medical malpractice victim is eligible.

It is also important to realize that these caps don’t change anything about the practices of doctors. A good and conscientious doctor who  makes an effort not to deviate from the standard of care, or immediately fixes the mistakes that he makes will not alter his habits because his insurance company has less of a financial liability. Doctors do not benefit from damage caps, and patients certainly don’t either. Insurance companies are the only people in this equation with anything to gain here, and why we as a nation have decided to essentially remove the function of juries and judges in order to benefit malpractice insurance companies is beyond us.

Greenberg and Bederman is a medical malpractice injury firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We serve the entire Washington, D.C. and Baltimore area, and that includes Fairfax, Arlington, Alexandria, Prince William County and all of Northern Virginia. If you or a loved one has been injured due to medical malpractice, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

To learn more about our medical malpractice attorney, John Sellinger, please read hisbio, or watch his Youtube video.

Morally speaking, there are many things wrong with this concept. And there are more than a few examples as to how these caps exist for no other reason than the financial convenience of the insurance companies.

One example in particular is happening in Nevada right now. A doctor named Depak Disal runs an endoscopy clinic there, and it is alleged that his clinic caused a hepatitis outbreak which affected thousands of people all over Nevada. At issue is this question: Does the damage cap cover “people,” or “incidents?”

In other words, if it can be proven that Dr. Disal was responsible for “one” hepatitis outbreak, would this mean that his insurance company would be obliged to pay out the limit of the $350,000 damage cap only once? Would everyone who allegedly got hepatitis from Dr. Disal’s clinic be forced to share one capped judgment? Or would the cap apply to each individual person who contracted hepatitis? Would any of you like to take a guess as to which side of the argument Dr. Disal’s insurance company is on?

As strange as this argument seems, one court in Nevada actually agreed with the premise, but another judge ruled the exact opposite. So we expect the case to be ruled upon by the Nevada Supreme Court fairly soon. And if rulings in other states are any indication, it could be that damage caps in Nevada might be a thing of the past altogether.

Illinois and Georgia are two states where their respective Supreme Courts have ruled that caps on damages are unconstitutional, based on the grounds that they ignore the separation of powers that was written into the Constitution. In other words, damage caps lessen the ability of a judge or jury to rule effectively on a case. With damage caps, a judgment on a supposedly independent court case is essentially pre-determined by members of another branch, and that is absolutely against the premises laid out in Articles I, II and III.

While we most certainly agree with that on legal grounds, we also find it outrageous that state or federal legislators are allowed to assign market value to pain, suffering and emotional loss. We also can’t imagine that a hepatitis victim being eligible only for a “share” of a judgment rather than a separate judgment is in any way fair. Hopefully, the Nevada Supreme Court will do away with damage caps entirely, and the question of whether it was “one” incident or a few thousands separate incidents will be rendered moot.

Greenberg and Bederman is a medical malpractice injury law firm located in Silver Spring, Maryland. We are currently offering legal assistance to people in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. who have been injured due to medical negligence, misdiagnosis, violation of standard of care, or surgical errors. If you or a loved one has been hurt due to a doctor’s mistake, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free medical malpractice legal consultation today.

Serious Car Accidents:Any accident that involves a complete loss of your car and/or a stay in the hospital should not be handled without legal counsel. When medical treatment is involved, insurance companies will often try to deny liability outright or offer an artificially low settlement in order to minimize the payout. Handling a car accident injury claim without an injury lawyer is practically a guarantee that your needs will not be realistically met.

Accidents with Trucks or other Commercial Vehicles:Tractor trailers and other commercial vehicles are on the road for no other reason than to make money, and as a result the laws regarding commercial insurance coverage are different. A commercial vehicle might have multiple policies, with the driver having one policy and the freight company having another. What often happens in the event of a commercial vehicle accident is a game of “pass the buck,” where one insurer will claim that the other insurer is more liable than the other and vice versa. Commercial insurance companies are also notorious for being closed mouthed and difficult during investigations. An experienced personal injury attorney can help you sort out the liability issues, determine who was at fault, and help you receive fair compensation for your injuries and property damage. And considering the harm that a truck or tractor trailer can do, it is a safe bet that there will be both serious injuries and major property damage. The stakes are too high in a situation like that to go it alone.

Medical Malpractice: Doctors make mistakes all the time, but not all medical mistakes are necessarily a medical malpractice. If a medical provider deviates from the standard of care, and causes harm to the patient, with damages, there may be a negligence claim against the medical provider. Even if the doctors are upfront about the mistake and the insurance company offers you a settlement, there could be elements of that settlement that are inadequate. An experienced personal injury attorney should be able to tell fairly quickly whether or not your settlement offer is a decent one.

Falls:On the surface, slipping and falling might seem to be more comical that damaging, but the reality is that falls are a major cause of serious injuries and deaths. Because slipping and falling can be embarrassing, even people who are severely injured are sometimes hesitant to consult with an attorney. But businesses, hotels and rental properties are required to maintain safe premises for customers, guests and tenants. Unmarked wet floors, poorly lit staircases or cracked flooring are only some of the examples as to how negligent maintenance by an owner or manager has resulted in serious injury. A fall might be embarrassing, but if you were seriously injured due to circumstances that were not your fault, you have every right to seek compensation for your damages. An injury attorney can conduct an investigation and help determine whether or not your injury happened due to negligence.

Despite the sunny advertising about being a “good neighbor,” the average insurance adjuster is not in the business of writing big checks. In fact, most insurance adjusters, whether they work for auto insurance, commercial vehicle insurance, medical malpractice insurance or property insurance, are actually financially rewarded for paying out less in claims. It is therefore in their best interest to pay you as little as possible. To that end, they routinely offer artificially low settlements, and engage in manipulative tactics to get you to accept them. A good rule of thumb for dealing with insurance adjusters is that if there is any element of your injury that goes beyond the concrete arithmetic in front of you, then any settlement that is offered to you should be thoroughly scrutinized by a personal injury attorney. For instance, if the injury was particularly painful, then that pain and suffering should be compensated. If you are unable to return to work because of your injury, then you should be compensated for your lost income. If you will have to go through rehabilitation to recover from your injuries, the rehabilitation costs should be covered.

If your adjuster offers excuses for not providing for these costs in the settlement, or if it seems that he is trying to steer the blame for the accident over to you, or if he says things like “We don’t want to make mountains out of molehills,” you can be absolutely sure that this means you aren’t being treated fairly.

Any experienced personal injury attorney should be able to take a look at your settlement offer and determine whether or not it is adequate to cover your damages, both present and future damages. If insurance companies would simply be forthcoming and generous from the beginning, we injury lawyers may go out of business. An experienced injury lawyer can judge what any settlement is lacking and the  best way to proceed.

In any accident requiring medical treatment, it is simply better to be safe than sorry. Consulting an injury attorney after a serious accident can keep you from becoming victimized a second time. You shouldn’t find out that your settlement is inadequate after you’ve already signed it.

Greenberg and Bederman is a personal injury law firm based in Silver Spring, Maryland. Our attorneys have provided legal counsel for the injured of Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. since 1985. We have helped secure high settlements and judgments for those who have been injured due to car accidents, medical malpractice, or other types of personal injury. If you or a loved one in the greater Washington, D.C. area has been injured in an accident, contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free legal consultation today.

To learn more about personal injury law, please read our personal injury page on our website.  To learn more about our personal injury lawyers, please see our personal injury videos on Youtube.

Viral, bacterial and fungal bacteria cause nosocomial infections.  Viruses are the leading cause of nosocomial infections in pediatric patients.  While bacterial and fungal infections are less common they are more commonly associated with morbidity and mortality.  Some of the more common nosocomial infections include but are not limited to:

·         MRSA – Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus is now unfortunately a tremendous problem within healthcare facilities.  It is a huge challenge in as much as it remains a significant cause of hospital-acquired infection.  It can only be treated with the glycopeptides group of antibiotics such as vancomycin, which is expensive, can only be given intravenously, and has been associated with renal impairment.

·         Group A Strep – This is a type of strep that causes sore throats but also scarlet fever and rheumatic fever and pneumonia

·         Group B Strep – This is the most common type of strep found in newborns.  It is very dangerous and can cause meningitis, brain damage, cerebral palsy, hearing and vision loss and death.  It is also very dangerous to pregnant women, elderly and those with compromised immune systems.

·         Necrotising fasciitis – This is a very severe bacterial infection, which often results in amputation of a limb or death.

Infections such as these can be completely devastating not only to the victim but to their families.  Babies may require extended hospital stays, or worse yet have ongoing lifelong effects due to the infection the acquired.  A patient going in for a simple operation may come away with a debilitating infection not only requiring months of treatment but also possibly risking the loss of a limb or even worse the loss of their life.

Many states require that healthcare facilities require stricter enforcement of measures to prevent these infections, yet, tragically, this is an ongoing problem.  Patients put their trust into the doctors and healthcare facilities at times when they are very vulnerable completely believing they will come home from the hospital healthier than they went in.  Hospitals and the medical profession owe it to their patients to make sure they receive the best possible care available in a sterile environment.  If you or your loved one has contacted an infection as a result of hospital or medical error, you need a legal team experienced in this type of malpractice. 

 To learn more about medical malpractice issues, please read medical malpractice frequently asked questions on our website.  TO learn more about our medical malpractice lawyer, John J. Sellinger, please read about our firm, and click on firm bios for Mr. Sellinger, or watch his medical malpractice video.

insurance companies are corporate entities and thus seek to maximize profits. Increasing premiums will effectuate this goal. The negative publicity this generates can be safely passed on as the work of legal boogeymen

1.       

insurance companies need to compensate for poor corporate investment strategies (sub-prime markets, dot-coms, Enron, etc.)

Either way, doctors should not look to plaintiffs’ lawyers as the cause of premium increases. Instead, the AMA should require insurance providers to explain the need for premium increases based on actual statistics rather than rhetoric. And, voters should ask politicians to find real problems on which to base campaigns.

Citations:

Prof. Herb Kritzer's article is Risks, Reputations, and Rewards: Contingency Fee Legal Practice in the United States (Stanford University Press, 2004).

Suggested Reading:

David A. Hyman and Charles Silver, Medical Malpractice Litigation and Tort Reform: It's the Incentives, Stupid, 59 Vand. L. Rev. 1085 (May 2006).

Jason Fernandez

For more information on medical malpractice issues, please see our website at G&B Website, and click on the medical malpractice tab.