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Maybe I'll stir things up a bit here by offering a lawyer's perspective. (Disclosure - I work in-house for a corporation now, but I did work as a plaintiffs' personal injury lawyer in my younger days, and filed two medical and one dental malpractice case, out of the twenty or so I was asked to consider taking.)
Keep in mind that there are a lot of urban legends on the subject, so a healthy skepticism is probably warranted for some of the anecdotal evidence you might come across (perhaps even in my posting). I'll start with a few observations.
1. Plaintiffs' attorneys aren't actually that anxious to handle medical malpractice cases. They're very expensive to prosecute; you can't win one without paying another physician (and sometimes several) to testify as an expert witness. Your own witness fees will run you thousands of dollars; when you're deposing the defendants' experts, you have to pay their customary rates. In neither case are they constrained by the cost restraints associated with managed care. Moreover, something like 2 out of 3 juries in medical malpractices cases find for the defense. (Legal malpractice cases, by contrast, are much more likely to result in plaintiffs' verdicts; they're also far more commonly filed, by the way.) Plaintiffs' attorneys generally advance all the costs for these cases, and they're almost always an expensive gamble. The number of attorneys that have the capital or willingness to gamble $50,000 or $100,000 on a single case is not high. (Granted, there are some, but not many.)
2. In California, where I practice, damages and attorneys fees in medical malpractice cases are limited by statute. (The limit for pain and suffering awards is $250,000, for example, and hasn't been raised since the statute was enacted 20 or more years ago.)
3. If you look behind the headlines that talk about the "malpractice crisis" in some state or other, you may well find that there has been a large (perhaps collusive) increase in insurance rates without any corresponding increase in the number of claims made or settled.
4. A large jury award in a malpractice case doesn't necessary mean a lot of money in the pocket of the plaintiff (or the plaintiff's attorney, for that matter). In a lot of cases, the parties have already agreed to a settlement with a ceiling and a floor, and are relying on the jury's verdict to set the specific number. Large jury awards are frequently set aside by the trial judge; they're also typically appealed, which can delay things for years.
5. I don't minimize the distress occasioned by being the defendant in a lawsuit. I can tell you from personal experience that the stress is higher when the claim is justified than when it's frivolous.
By the way, Doctor, I've long enjoyed your posts.
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