Medical Malpractice

"You have cancer".  This is a terrible thing to hear.  Immediately you wonder how bad it is, if you're going to live, and how brutal the treatment is going to be.

Everybody knows someone who has had cancer, or knows somebody who lost a loved one to cancer.  And everybody knows that a cancer diagnosis will change your life.

          It is an unfortunate fact of life that many of the people who do the most damage in this world have no means of paying for the damage that they do.  Any trial lawyer can tell you dozens of stories about drunk drivers who kill whole families—but have little or no auto insurance, or deadbeats who don’t pay for goods and services but have no means of paying a judgment either.  

When I go to trial, the people I represent count on twelve strangers on a jury to see the truth, and to speak for their community--to say "this is wrong" and "we won't tolerate it"

The most basic duty that any doctor has is to listen and pay attention to you.  If they don't listen, and don't take the time to perform a thorough examination, they will never get the information they need to actually help you.  A doctor who doesn't listen to your symptoms of chest pain isn't going to try to find out what is causing your chest pain.  A doctor who doesn't examine your child carefully is going to miss symptoms of meningitis.  A nurse who rushes through getting your information in an emergency department isn't going to write down what needs to go into your records.  And then

Deciding to File Suit

"Consent Forms" and Patient's Rights

Those of you who have been to a hospital lately have most likely signed a “consent” form, although you probably did not read it closely and it was presented to you with a bunch of other papers to sign by some clerk or possibly a nurse who was in a hurry.

Hysterectomy--the surgical removal of a woman's uterus- is one of the most common surgeries in the world.  Approximately 600,000 hysterectomies are performed annually in the United States, and approximately 20 million American women have had a hysterectomy. By the age of 60, more than one-third of all women have had a hysterectomy.

In analyzing whether you have a good medical malpractice case, we’ll look at three issues:

1. Did the Doctor Make an Inexcusable Mistake?

It is not enough in a medical malpractice case to prove that a doctor made a mistake. Some mistakes are excusable and are not medical malpractice.

For example, during a surgery, a doctor may accidentally cut something he didn’t intend to cut. This is probably medical malpractice, but in some cases may be an excusable mistake, and therefore not medical malpractice.