Jackpot! A malpractice verdict fires up a plaintiff lawyer

A $217 million (!) verdict, but of course, “This isn’t about money, this was about the quest for justice.”

Some choice quotes from the plaintiff lawyer:

Family attorney Steve Yerrid said he’ll pursue damages from the insurance company, which is now claiming in a lawsuit that it has no duty to defend Austin because the doctor breached his contract.
“We’re coming after them next,” vowed Yerrid, who was part of a team of lawyers that brought Florida’s landmark suit against tobacco companies and has won numerous other multimillion dollar verdicts.
“For all those people who believe in tort reform, they better find a new day job,” Yerrid said. “We’re here to stay.”

Comments

Criminallopath
Hah hah hah.
“Medicine, magic, miracles”
Be careful on the cultivation of the veil of omnipotence of power of the provider in the minds of the sheeple, lest ye be held to the same standard.
This is yet another par for the course verdict. One can only hypothesize at the millions siphoned by allopathic care providers from the multitudes of PI, criminal defense and WC cases that were resolved on the same day in which clinical junk science causation testimony was bandied about. It kind of sucks when one finds oneself on the receiving end of junk science clinical testimony… think about that the next time you shaft some poor third party with your junk science inclusion of history in the diagnosis of the condition for the litigant that shows up to your doorstep.
CJD
Also Kevin,
I forgot to ask you – would you trade places with this “jackpot” winner?
NoAcuteDistress
Yippeeeee!! The Sodomites get more money today!
mo’ money, Mo’ Money, MO’ MONEY!
SarahW
Oh come on, CJD. Everytime the litigation lotto gets up that high, I buy at least $30 of tickets up at the Copay. It’s just a dream, but maybe someday an inexcusable- misdiagnosis-leading-to-brain-damage and-disability jackpot will come my way.
sailorman
So, when this verdict is overturned or significantly reduced on appeal–which is almost always the case–will you post on that, too? Just wondering, you know.
If they do, as promised, donate all the money then why the snide “sure, sure” in reference to their “not about the money” quote?
lawyersux
They should donate all the money to a hospital “safety committee” since they seem to think a medical error caused this and could have prevented it. Will it make hospitals safer to take another $100 million out, and give 30 million to the human pieces of shit?
Criminallopath
Why stop at the copay costs? You pay hundreds more per years in auto insurance costs so that physicians can line their pockets with post hoc ergo propter hoc, mindreading and human lie detecting clinical causation junk science when they see their batches of whining litigants. If you run a business you pay hundreds or thousands per year so that the WC physicians can line their pockets using the same junk science clinical causation pap.
So riddle me this. We have all seen cases in which an august work comp “healer” diagnoses a worker as being “disabled.” Yet, on subrosa, the same disabled worker is lifting bags of cement, working in the garden, lifting weights and discarding the neck and back brace. So much for being “disabled.” We are left with one of three options. The first is that the “healer” was complicit in the fraud. The second is that the methodology utilized by the healer is valid but the healer’s implementation was incompetent. The third is that the methodology itself was invalid and that the disability determination and more specifically “cause assessment” were nothing more than junk science. The question then becomes, where is the outrage in the “healer” community for license revocation for one of their own that is either committing fraud, is incompetent or is performing a disservice to the field by claiming to have solid foundation for opinions when no such foundation exists?
JJMD
Correct me please if I’m wrong, but the plaintiff and their lawyers are not going to see anything like 217M. They won a verdict against a few doctors, who will have policy limits of 1 to 5M. They will be personally liable for the rest, and they will probably be bankrupt, but they are unlikely to have assests in this range to cough up. Bad enough, of course; but what is the purpose of these ludicrous awards?
JJMD
Help me out here, please. The plaintiff and his lawyer are never going to see that kind of money, are they? I mean, they won a verdict against a bunch of doctors, not a big corporation. They will have policy limits in the 1 – 3 M range. The doctors will be liable for the rest and all of the punitive damages, but they won’t have those kinds of assets to cough up. Or, is the lawyer gooing after the insurance company for the full amount because they could have settled for less but didn’t? Does this get the MD’s off the hook? Otherwise aren’t these large verdicts just fantasy numbers?
lawyersux
The lawyer sodomite will take the physician’s first born-son as partial payment, physician’s grandfather will have to go over and mow the lawn every Saturday for next ten years, lus Sodomite is looking forward to receipt from MD’s daughter’s Bat Mitzvah next month. He’ll take every cent not tied down. Probably gets his 30% first then worry about what “victim” gets.
anonymous
This is another one of those ridiculous jury verdicts where it would be cheaper to murder than maim. Evidently, according to the jury, these doctors committed a crime worth more in damages than the Enron criminals. Regardless of guilt, no life is worth a fraction of the amount awarded here, and of course there will not be enough money to pay a verdict like that. So, in reality, a settlement will be made.
CJD
“Evidently, according to the jury, these doctors committed a crime worth more in damages than the Enron criminals.”
Enron was sued for many billions.
Drinkysr
Oh, for God’s sake criminallopath would you stop mercilessly flogging that dead horse already?
Or to use your own overblown verbiage: I petition thee to foreswear the pittiless pugilism upon the carcass of the aforementioned equine.
Hm… it’s not really complete unless I squeeze in “post hoc ergo propter hoc”.
In case you don’t know it, big words are a poor substitute for actual erudition.
Learn another trick, pony.
Criminallopath
Whining about the cost of doing business (aka Malpractice insurance premiums) = Beating a dead horse.
Whining about being defendants in junk science cases involving junk science medical testimony = Beating a dead horse.
Keeping very, very quite when it comes to using the same junk science (parroting the litigan) in PI and WC cases = Won’t even touch that horse that was killed by malpractice.
Amazing, is it not, how applicable my underlying comlpaints are to almost every story about physicians whining and crying about the legal system while using the same system to line their own pockets? The players may change, but the story and the complaints remain the same.
My general assumption is that I am dealing with those that are a bit beyond the intellectual level of the common citizen. For the most part, my assumption has prooven to be correct. You, on the other hand, are a bit of an enigma. Do you not understand the “big words?” Do they frighten you? Methinks that the actual answer is that you are complaining about the manner of writing only in that you have no objective support for the counterpoint position regarding clinical junk science and physician profiteering when it comes to the legal system. Unfortunately (and I really wish that this was not true), “post hoc ergo propter hoc” is the most apt term for defining “clinical causation assessment.” Treating patients and diagnosing conditions present is one thing. Parotting the CLAIM (operative word here) of the litigant/patient, relying on their veracity (unless it is a med mal case) for time of onset of subjective symptoms and lack of prior history and equating SUBJECTIVE (operative word here) symptoms to structural anomalies, en toto, is nothing more than pure garbage when it comes to science.
ismd
Methinks it is time to posthaste ignore the improptu ramblings of the Criminallopath, wherefore and to wit, the use of rather large words notwithstanding, clinical causation leads to the belief that he/she throweth out their own junk science in his/her inflammatory modus operundi, lacking any veracity and merely only his/her own low opinion as to the state of healthcare, to wit he/she hath no clear comprehension thereof, and less understanding than the sheeple he/she so callously denigrates.
anonymous
“Enron was sued for many billions”
For all we know the docs may have been sued for billions; that information is not revealed, only the amount of the award. Also not revealed is the apportionment of the award. Does anyone know if any Enron criminal has had this large a civil judgment? To the best of my knowledge, the answer is no.
So how about another high profile case, namely OJ Simpson’s civil trial. As far as I know, the award was “only” $33.5 million in that death case, and of course OJ continues to live well off his untouchable NFL pension in Florida.
Criminallopath
The Enron folks never made a vaunted oath to “do no harm.” That nonsense is the sole purview of the medical field. While nefarious behavior is all but expected from those in the energy business, who would expect nefarious behavior and incompetence from the clinical community? Society suffers a lack of access to care and pillaging by the medical community secondary to claims of “do no harm” and allowing only the “best and brightest” to enter the field (sarcasm intended)… god forbid that this system produced clinicians that could not live up to their own god complex mentality.
JSMD – Keep up with the clinical causation junk science, just don’t cry when one of your patients (litigants) claims an iatrogenic injury at your hands and one of your bretheren appears with the “crackhead patient denied complaints prior to treatment by JSMD but noted severe ring pain afterwards… therefore JSMD caused crackhead patient to suffer from an incompetent sphincter and crackhead patient is entitled to millions of dollars in compensation (we all know that crackhead litigant patients are infiniately reliable when it comes to honesty and accuracy).” Of course, we all know, that sphincter incompetence is solely caused by treatment at the hands of JSMD just like whining about “neck pain” is only caused by motor vehicle accidents (sarcasm once again intended).
anonymous
Rubbish. The officers and directors of Enron had a fidicuary duty to shareholders, which they violated in the worst sense.
Enron’s motto was “Respect, Integrity, Communication and Excellence.” Its “Vision and Values” mission statement declared, “We treat others as we would like to be treated ourselves……We do not tolerate abusive or disrespectful treatment. Ruthlessness, callousness and arrogance don’t belong here.”
Sounds like a motto this blog should adopt!
The lack of objectivity here is pathological. Psychoanalysis is in order.
ismd
Crim,
Just so you know, I’m not one of the physician “whores” you constantly complain about. I’ve never testified in a suit for a plaintiff (and just in case CJD is reading, have never been asked to do so for one of my patients either). So what’s your point?
BTW, the above post might be the first time you didn’t use any big fancy words to try to impress the physician readers here (sarcasm intended).
Criminallopath
JSMD:
Believe it or not… The way I write here (sans typos) is the way that I normally write. Impressing physicians is not my intent nor is it something that is of even the smallest modicum of importance from my perspective. As an aside, one would would truely have to wonder about anyone who would be “impressed” by the size of the words utilized by another when the content does not paint the former in best of light.
The underlying problem, from my perspective, is the lack of even the slightest arguement that would pass scientific muster for cause attribution from the clinical perspective unless the diagnosis itself is hallmark. The anachronism of allowing clinicians to speculate wildly on the cause of an objective condition, leaving questionable litigation diagnoses such as railway spine (remember that one?), fibromyalgia and myofascial pain syndrome out of the discusion for the moment, is irksome at best and the prime motivator for junk PI, WC and med-mal cases at worst. Part of the problem is the judiciary, which has purchased wholesale into the mindset of allopathic idolatry by not applying the rules of scientific evidence in a manner that is ubiquitous across all fields of expertise. One can see how questionable clinical causation testimony would be admissible under the Kelley-Frye standard of “general acceptance in the field” in that if all clinicians speculate wildly about the cause of a condition that a particular clinician speculating wildly in a particular case is only following the existing paradigm. What is absolutely amazing is the admissibility of such testimony under Daubert, Kumho Tire or Federal Rules of Evidence 702. The claim of “differential diagnosis” satisfying the requirements of the stricter rules of evidence falls flat in the same manner as does standard clinical cause attribution. Any method of cause determination that relies on the veracity of the litigant/patient (reliance on history)versus that which is determinable by expert clinical diagnosis makes a mockery of the claim that plaintiffs must prove their case. It is no surprise that physicians are irate when they get a taste of their own medicine, so to speak, when a fellow physician practices this same junk science upon them in medical malpractice cases. Judges are lawyers and expecting them to see the unscientific nature of clinical cause assessment would be like expecting a bilateral below the knee amuptee to run a 100m race without the use of prosthetic legs. Allopathic medicine, however, is founded upon scientific principles (unlike the field of chiropractic) and as a man of science, my personal expectation is that its practitioners carry the torch of science instead of sullying it with junk (relying on the provided history by a patient/litigant/potential litigant) and pulling the wool over the eyes of the credulous and, unfortunately, ever decreasingly educated masses. Clinicians are no more “human lie detectors” than the next person and parroting the history provided as being the scientific cause of the condition requires about as much background, training and experience as a typical PI lawyer has in clinical medicine or credulous religous “flock” member has in critical thinking – none. The system will only be changed by clinicians either stating the obvious that in the vast majority of the cases seen that they have absolutely zero ability to determine the antecedent “cause” of the diagnosed condition or intervention from the outside by showing that clinical cause assessment (particularly for the junk science MVA injury claim market) has a potential 100% error rate and is no more reliable than having than having the plaintiff advocate (patient advocate does not cut it in that no prima fascie case for an objective analysis can be made)testify as to cause. Until this is achieved, both inccoent third parties and innocent clinicians will be subject to junk science clinical causation testimony. Clinicians only having an issue with this when it comes to med mal cases (and not cases in which they or their colleagues are profiteering) really does devalue the profession as a whole. While you may not participate in this system (no cause attribution based on the word of the patient?) you are certainly subject to its junk nature should you ever find yourself involved as a defendant in a mertiless med-mal case.
CJD
“Does anyone know if any Enron criminal has had this large a civil judgment? To the best of my knowledge, the answer is no.”
Enron the company would ultimately be liable for any acts of their employees acting in their corporate capacities. You’re making a poor comparison.
I wish we knew more about the facts of this case that would allow us to understand why the big punitive damages award.
Drinkysr
Crim, you wrote “Enron never made a vaunted oath to “do no harm.”
In case you don’t know “First, do no harm” is not part of the Hippocratic oath. Common misconception. It does come from Hippocrates ( Epidemics, Bk. I, Sect. XI) but is not part of the oath.
Of course I figure that a pinhead like you would prefer the Latin phrase whenever possible so here you go: “Primum non nocere”
Another observation – you widely decry the quality of healthcare and then whine about access. I am reminded of 2 old ladies in a restaurant- “This food is lousy”, “Yes, and such small portions”
anonymous
“Enron the company would ultimately be liable for any acts of their employees acting in their corporate capacities. You’re making a poor comparison.”
Am I? Isn’t the theory the same as to why the physicians groups were sued?
CJD
Don’t know. We don’t have enough info.
Criminallopath
“Another observation – you widely decry the quality of healthcare and then whine about access. I am reminded of 2 old ladies in a restaurant- “This food is lousy”, “Yes, and such small portions”
Limited access, a byproduct of supply side restrictions, purportedly sets up a system to provide high quality care by limiting acess to the field, from the provider perspective, of the best and brightest. Instead, we have a system where vast swaths of healthcare provisionis hijacked through legislative feat by the allopathic profession. Instead of having a system that ensures that the “best and brightest” are practitioners, we have a system in which malpractitioners are protected and allowed to practice by inept and incompetent state level medical boards. The system, as a whole, is a failure… That is unless one is a provider… Then it is a vehicle for after-expense compensation rates beyond the ken of vast majority of fields of endeavor, medical worship through the sheeple mentality of the populace and guaranteed perpetual emlpoyment (regardless of actual skill in the art of clinical medicine). The American populace deserves what it gets as long as they allow the current healthcare system to be foisted upon them.
anonymous
“Limited access….purportedly sets up a system to provide high quality care by limiting acess …of the best and brightest”
I couldn’t agree more; we are limiting access of the best and the brightest by providing other, more attractive career opportunities.
Anonymous
Here’s a question, doctors:
Who among you would have discharged my 18-year old son, who had a tonsillectomy, lost 1,000 cc’s of blood upon extubation, was reintubated, taken back into surgery and discharged the same day?
Oh, let’s not forget that the second surgery was omitted from the record.
Can you say “addendum” boys & girls?
But only upon return to the hospital with a full bleed?

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