A neurosurgeon charges $10,000 per day for his testimony.
Related posts:
- Expert witnesses are immune from defamation suits
- A physician defends the expert witness system
- An "expert" witness fakes his experience
- Expert witness with a conscience
- Expert witness corruption
- An expert witness goes down in flames
- Fired for being an expert witness
KevinMD.com on Facebook
{ 17 comments }
Shoot, and I thought the ATI Uber Edition whatever-model-number Crossfire graphics card(s) was expensive…and I also went into the wrong brain specialty. Sheesh.
He is a neurologist, not a neurosurgeon.
“The commission usually pays $200 per hour for testimony, $125 per hour for out-of-court services and $75 per hour for travel time and the time doctors spend waiting to testify in court or to give a deposition.”
These rates are unreasonable. It should be a minimum of $250/hr for testimony, $150/hr for out-of-court services and $100/hr travel and waiting time.
$10,000 a day does seem a bit excessive, though.
$10,000 might be a lot for a comparable day in the office seeing a schedule of patient visits but reasonable if you had to hire a surgeon who valued a day as the revenue gross on a day of surgical procedures.
OMG! We are dying! We are being killed! We are being forced to abandon patients! Give us more money!
>>”OMG! We are dying! We are being killed! We are being forced to abandon patients! Give us more money!
Spoken like a true trial lawyer who likes to keep his own expenses down. Makes that 40% bite of the award seem smaller that way.
Big frickin deal. Find someone else then if they don’t want to pay. I think I will charge the same. It’s a free country.
“Big frickin deal. Find someone else then if they don’t want to pay. I think I will charge the same. It’s a free country.”
Exactly. I charge $500/hr including travel time…
A “free country?” Far be it from me to let reality intrude into your ideal fantasy. For those whoring with the ATLA in this regard. There is only one word to summarize any whining heard from your ilk about the rapacious trial attorneys, the legal system, etc. That word is hypocrite.
Seriously, how dare you testify against a negligent physician on behalf of his/her victims. That’s an outrage!
Hmmmmm… it is interesting how the lawyers on this thread think that it okay to pay doctors for their time when it comes to getting their money, but it is not okay for drug companies to pay physicians for their time. I would think that 10,000 dollars a day would give more incentive to be dishonest than a free lunch worth 5 dollars once every two weeks. Maybe, physicians shouldn’t be allowed to accept money from lawyers in order to testify. They should just have to voluntarily testify. That right there could stop the medical malpractice problem.
Testifying in court is not what I slaved those years and medical school for. I don’t like doing it. I don’t think the tort system is just so I don’t really “believe” in doing it–it doesn’t further the values I chose to serve.
So if someone wants me to willingly do it, I want wo be very well paid–much more than doing clinical work. At least in the later I feel like I am serving some value higher than greed and therefore get some of my payment in personal satisfaction.
I charge 3X what I gross per clinical hour. That deters all but the most determined–which suits me fine. Even then I don’t feel overpaid, but properly compensated from being taken away from the work I love to be degraded and browbeated by counsel for whichever side my opinion happens to not satisfy.
Part of the problem with the system is the one synapse judges that refuse to subject clinical “causation” testimony to the standards of either Kelley-Frye or Daubert (your jurisdiction may vary). Under the latter, the “error rate” prong when it comes on relying to on involved litigants who claim no prior history and claim the onset of subjective symptoms coincidentally with the event underlying the litigation – both of which the provider has zero ability to independently evaluate would result in such testimony being thrown out the window.
“Seriously, how dare you testify against a negligent physician on behalf of his/her victims. That’s an outrage”
I thought it was an “alleged” negligent physician? Is presumed innocent until proven guilty not acceptable in physician’s cases CJD?
If he is testifying against them, presumably he already believes the defendant was negligent.
And innocent until proven guilty is a criminal concept. But you knew that.
“I don’t think the tort system is just so I don’t really “believe” in doing it–it doesn’t further the values I chose to serve. “
Determining if people have been damaged as a result of other’s negligence and helping them recover for the damages from that negligence isn’t a value you choose to serve?
I would think helping people in that situation is a pretty good value. Particularly since it is your profession who put the expert witness requirement in.
Someone said: “Spoken like a true trial lawyer who likes to keep his own expenses down. Makes that 40% bite of the award seem smaller that way.”
Actually, expert witness expenses come out of the PLAINTIFF’s share of any settlement or award – the lawyers’ contingent fee is NEVER affected by how expensive it is to win the verdict…unless, of course, no money changes hands. This is why legitimately injured plaintiffs generally walk away with only about 46% of what a jury says they should get….
Why, that’s 54% more than the physician’s insurer was offering, then.
What would you charge for that service Donna?
Comments on this entry are closed.