Medical negligence and medical malpractice usually involve mistakes in judgment on the part of a physician, nurse, or other health care provider. But an interesting source of medical negligence is on the rise in many American hospitals: It’s called “alarm fatigue”, and it most commonly affects nurses rather than doctors.…
In my previous post on this subject, I noted how President Barack Obama had raised the subject of “medical malpractice reform” in his State of The Union speech last week, and of how a Massachusetts medical malpractice case that just settled this week, illustrates how severe and unjust typical “tort…
President Barack Obama, in his State of The Union speech Monday evening, made another reference to the supposed need for tort reform; to ‘control the rise in health care costs.’ I bristle at these kinds of mentions, for two reasons: 1) They demonstrate how successful liability insurers have been in…
Here’s an interesting case – far from decided or even litigated yet – but interesting nonetheless. It’s a hybrid of both medical malpractice and wrongful death (actually, wrongful death arising from alleged medical negligence.) The parents of two young children, whose mentally ill aunt literally carried them to their deaths…
2009 ended with a big bang when it comes to Massachusetts injury law, specifically, Massachusetts medical malpractice. A lot of legal specialists such as me are paying close attention to a jury verdict that was handed down last month in a Suffolk County medical malpractice case: A $15 million award…
In my final post in this case, let’s ask who are the real targets of this suit – the nurse practitioner, the supervising doctor, or Harvard University? For those of you who said “Harvard University” (thinking correctly that it’s the world’s most famous university with billions of dollars in assets…
In my previous post, I reported on a wrongful death and medical malpractice lawsuit filed by the family of a Harvard University student who committed suicide while under the care of the school’s Health Services Department. Now I’ll explain the legal basis for why this suit is being filed, and…
In my previous post, I wrote about how Massachusetts medical malpractice occurs far more commonly than most people think. I also wrote about how some people view the subject of medical malpractice as largely an exaggeration cooked up by plaintiffs’ personal injury lawyers. That viewpoint is extremely false. To illustrate…
Most people who hear stories of medical malpractice or medical negligence think those stories usually come from plaintiff’s personal injury lawyers, intent on “dramatizing” a rare and infrequent anomaly. Trust me, that isn’t so, at all. Medical negligence occurs with shocking frequency. What makes this truth hard to believe, is…
Thanks to a very effective and coordinated campaign by the medical liability insurance industry, a lot of people think that true cases of medical negligence, or medical malpractice, are rare. This is reflected in the relatively low rate of plaintiff’s verdicts in medical malpractice cases brought in Massachusetts courts. (“Plaintiff’s…