My favorite football coach is famous for his mantra: “The standard is the standard”. In court, however, proving negligence often depends upon establishing a “standard of care” that may be vague. In medical malpractice cases, expert witnesses often testify to a national minimum standard 0f care that applies in all communities. In this interesting Florida […]
I have had cases like the one below with both anonymous and signed reports removed from medical charts. In one case, a doctor met me in a restaurant across the street from the hospital and delivered to me his copy of a report that had been removed from the patient’s chart. I have also been […]
I’m curious because the news report doesn’t mention it – wasn’t there a repeat biopsy once they realized the first specimen was lost? “Defendant UW lost the surgically removed tumor prior to conducting the requisite pathological review and left plaintiff without a clear diagnostic or care plan,” according to the complaint seeking medical negligence damages. […]
On appeal, Timely Mission argues that a new trial is warranted because the jury heard improper testimony from nursing home staff members that a certified nursing assistant, Melanie Blakesley, had physically and verbally abused residents other than Weaver. Read more at: https://www.law360.com/personal-injury-medical-malpractice/articles/1691891?nl_pk=029cff45-637f-44e3-babf-75563f8e0bfd&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=personal-injury-medical-malpractice&utm_content=2023-06-23&nlsidx=0&nlaidx=6?copied=1 From the website page summarizing my experience in nursing home injuries The health […]
An Illinois court ruled that a defendant doctor’s legal team could not have access to the plaintiff’s mental health records because they were not relevant to the claims. “From the limited record, Dr. Rao practices at a clinic that specialized in lung issues. Plaintiff was there presumably seeking treatment for lung issues. Nowhere in the […]
Whenever I read an operative report in a surgery gone bad, I wonder about the accuracy of the surgeon’s descriptions. Sometimes, the outcome and physical evidence make the descriptions untenable. We may be on the verge of something closer to a true, contemporaneous account of every surgery. The OR Black Box system, which was developed […]
When I was coming up as a trial lawyer, I stayed hyper-focused on maintaining a variety of skills during discovery to get at the truth. My Dad used to say, “You need more than one arrow in your quiver.” More often than not, whether in depositions or hearings, combat was the rule of the day. […]
A BMJ study published in 2015 concluded that High LDL-C is inversely associated with mortality in most people over 60 years. This finding is inconsistent with the cholesterol hypothesis. You can find the BMJ study here: Lack of an association or an inverse association between low-density-lipoprotein cholesterol and mortality in the elderly: a systematic review While […]
Not everyone supports allowing prosecutors to use lyrics as evidence. In “Rap on Trial: Race, Lyrics and Guilt in America” by Erik Nielson and Andrea L. Dennis, rapper Killer Mike argues that rap as an art form is a safe space where raw emotions can and should be expressed. “Left unchecked, it has the potential to silence […]
I’ve been writing about how peer review privilege encourages medical error for years now. But it keeps coming up in the news. It’s almost like nobody in charge listens to trial lawyers. lol. The false premise that secrecy encourages patient safety measures at any level of hospital administration is a myth that should not be […]
