Medical malpractice

A medical malpractice case is built on the medicine, so that is where we start. A registered nurse on staff reads your chart first, and we retain the expert before we file, not after.

We start with the medicine

The order matters, because the chart either supports a departure or it does not, and everything after that is expensive.

1. Intake, same day. We ask the questions that establish the case type, the county and the deadline.
2. Nurse review. A registered nurse reads the record and flags the interval where the standard of care was arguably breached.
3. Attorney review. An attorney reviews causation: whether the departure from the standard of care caused the injury.
4. Expert retention. A physician in the relevant specialty reviews before anything is filed, as the certificate of merit requires.
5. Suit, and the decision to try it. We take cases to trial when the offer does not match the injury. The $80 million Bronx result was a verdict, not a settlement.

We review the records and have an expert weigh in before anything is filed, because that review decides whether there is a case.

It is also why we advance every case expense, including the clinical review. If we are wrong about your chart, that is our cost, not yours.

What has to be proven, in order

1. A provider-patient relationship

The clinician owed you a duty of care. This is rarely contested, but it decides who can be named. In a hospital case, whether a doctor was an employee or an independent attending often determines whether the hospital is on the hook at all.

2. A departure from the standard of care

Not a bad outcome. A departure. The standard is what a reasonably prudent practitioner in that specialty would have done in those circumstances, and it is established by an expert in the same field, not by hindsight.

3. Causation

The hardest element, and the one most cases fail on. The departure has to have caused the injury. A missed diagnosis only matters if catching it would have changed the outcome, and proving that requires a physician willing to say so under oath.

4. Damages

A measurable harm. In catastrophic cases that means a life care plan: future medical costs, lost earning capacity and the cost of care over a projected lifetime, built by economists and rehabilitation experts.

New York also requires a certificate of merit

Before a malpractice complaint is filed, the attorney must certify that a physician has reviewed the facts and believes there is a reasonable basis for the action. This is why a firm that cannot get an expert to look at your chart cannot file your case, and why a free review is worth having even if you are told no. We do this review up front, at no cost to you.

Every result has its own page, with the venue and the medicine

A case is only useful to you if you can see whether it resembles yours, so each one is published with the venue, the medicine and what the defence argued rather than as a number in a list. All verdicts and settlements.