Interesting case where the jury goes too far in the physician’s favor:
The jurors reasoned that the pathologist had not acted maliciously, and that if he were found liable for a monetary award, he might leave the state. They were likely influenced by political ads that ran during the state’s tort reform ballot campaign, describing physicians who were leaving Nevada because of its malpractice crisis.
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“—one of her attorneys asked me to serve as an expert witness in the case. As her treating physician, I felt a moral obligation to support Mary’s claim.”
I beg your pardon? I thought “expert witnesses” were supposed to be unbiased, neutral, and base their testimony on scientific facts? Yet this guy claims that he is obligated to support her side of the conflict because she is his patient – an attitude that should make his testimony inadmissible.
What he really is saying is “She paid me, so I testify in her behalf; yet I call myself an expert witness”. Isn’t this as close to perjury as one can get?
More like, she was my patient. I am obligated not to withhold the truth about something that damaged her, even if it was the negligence of another physician.
If this was such an open and shut case, how come nobody blames the plaintiff’s lawyer for blowing the case? It would appear that the patient has a very good case of malpractice against her lawyer, but wait, the standard of legal malpractice is a little different from medical malpractice, isn’t it?
The judge will not allow the defense to extract legal fees for the incompetence of the plaintiff’s lawyer, because the jury obviously ignored the legal standard.
The jury found the original pathologist negligent (and the original pathologist openly admitted he made a mistake), but it was not a malicious act. So no punitive award.
Damn the jury, because they didn’t follow the standard of awarding millions. Well, it’s certainly not the fault of the plaintiff’s lawyer’s pitiful arguments, or the fault of the judge who instructed the jury to award millions.
Maybe the jury said that a doctor can be forgiven for an honest mistake. Maybe the jury said that an incompetent lawyer should not be forgiven for a bad mistake.
Or maybe the jury said that the system of court driven medical malpractice is just not working, and we need something better.
Don’t blame tort reform. Blame the obscene multimillion-dollar judgements ginned up by the greedy trial bar.
The trial bar’s greed caused this push-back. And now it seems this lady is hurt. Maybe John Edwards can part with a couple hundred thousand in spare change from the tens of millions he made from junk science and channeling babies.
I wouldn’t call it a case of “the downside of tort reform” at all. The system would have allowed her $350K noneconomic damages, and whatever economic damages the plaintiff lawyers could claim.
And she (through the trial lawyers) claimed they “only wanted enough to provide for grandchildren” (and the lawyers new Porche)……the system as it stands would have allowed precisely that. Well, the lawyer might have to settle for a BMW, which is the real problem with tort reform.
The problem was not tort reform, it was the jury. Of course, when the docs complain about juries, you know the respect we get from the Bar.
And the reason the jury acted the way it did, was their perception of the status quo ante. The quite real concern that doctors were leaving the state, or quitting needed work like trauma. And it was because of the way medical liability was before Nevada tort reform.
So no, don’t blame tort reform, blame the trial bar for the way they let things deteriorate before the Nevada docs let the trauma hospitals sit unstaffed, and finally forced the Nevada trial bar to clean up their act.
I don’t buy this story.
Jurys are brilliant when they buy the total fraud of the John Edwards industry and are evil when they find for the doctor?
Sorry, but this doesn’t pass the smell test.
Would the author feel better if the jury allowed unlimited damages, as it had in the recent past? Would that have made a difference when the jury allowed no damages? The jury was allowed to award $350K noneconomic damages, and for whatever reason declined to even do that.
Would the author have felt better if Nevada’s trauma center remained empty, as it was before the tort system was reformed?
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