Every day I get calls and emails describing awful medical care, which conclude with “will you take my medical malpractice case”? And 90% of the time I politely say “no”. Why? Justice may be blind, but it’s expensive. That’s particularly true in “med mal” cases. In some cases we have…
For at least a decade, hospitals and doctors’ offices, hoping improve medical care, have been equipping their offices, operating rooms and staff with nifty computers, ipads, smartphones and other electronic devices. This is great for quickly digging up patient data and drug information. But it also has a dark side.…
If you were my client, and you read the following headline in our local Central New York Newspaper, the Syracuse Post Standard, what would you do?: “Central New York Injury Lawyer Worst in Nation“. Or what about this one: “Auburn Injury Lawyer Charged with Misconduct Agrees to Never Practice Again“.…
Hospital care in this country is sick. Sadly, old-fashioned medical “care” is giving way to the “big business” model. Nothing new about that. Profits are being exalted over patient care. Again, nothing new. But the news about Health Management Associates, a for-profit hospital chain based in Naples, Fla., is simply…
I recently read an interesting online article entitled “Patient Harm: When An Attorney Won’t Take Your Case”. The article describes the sad truth that most legitimate medical malpractice victims will never find a lawyer to represent them because their injuries are too “insignificant” to be “litigation worthy”. You see, medical…
Judges, like most people, have a hard time admitting they’re wrong. Well, maybe even a harder time than most people. That black robe is an ego-inflater. A lowly lawyer gets elected, dons the robe and — voila! — he is suddenly addressed as “your honor”. People stand up when he…
Last week a very fine Syracuse New York medical malpractice lawyer, and a friend of ours, took a medical malpractice trial to verdict. His proof had gone in well. The malpractice seemed obvious, the harm horrendous. The jury seemed receptive. After his brilliant summation, the defendant’s malpractice insurance offered $800,000…
I recently read a New York Times article titled “losing My Leg to a Medical Error“. The author, Frederick Southwick, a physician and professor in a Florida medical school, describes how, seventeen years ago, he had a routine surgery on his left Achilles’ tendon. To prevent bleeding during the procedure,…
Yet another article about medical malpractice appeared in my favorite newspaper yesterday. The New York Times reports, in an article titled, “When Surgeons Leave Objects Behind” that surgeons in the U.S. leave an estimated 4,000 “surgical items” inside their patients every year, the vast majority of which are surgical sponges…
I get calls and emails almost every week from medical malpractice victims, yes, truly malpracticed patients, yet I turn most of them down. Why? It kills me to explain this to them, but the truth is that often the harm they suffered is not worth the cost of bringing a…