Chicago Medical Malpractice Lawyer Blog

I have spoken to many lawyers in the Chicago area about recent malpractice filings and most agree that they are seeing a decline in filings. Let's see if there is a corresponding drop in malpractice premiums. Don't hold your breath.

“Four years ago, the Scranton area captured national headlines when President Bush came to town to raise awareness about an epidemic of “junk lawsuits” and “excessive jury awards” that he claimed were driving away doctors and making health care unsafe. Doctors here were threatening to walk off the job and warning darkly that if state legislators didn’t act soon, women would be all but relegated to having babies on the kitchen table. Today, of course, we now know that the kitchen tables were spared, doctors by and large stayed put, and that Pennsylvania never really was suffering from a lawsuit epidemic. The latest evidence comes from the state courts themselves, which report that, last year, in the 10 counties of Northeastern Pennsylvania that include Lackawanna and Luzerne, injured patients and their families filed only 166 malpractice lawsuits, down from 272 in 2000.”

Stephanie Mencimer, Times-Tribune 5/06/07

This comes as no surprise to Chicago medical malpractice lawyers:

“Juries in medical malpractice cases tend to sympathize with the doctors being sued rather than the patients who are suing them, a law professor at the University of Missouri at Columbia has concluded after analyzing three decades of research on the subject. There is no empirical evidence to support the much-publicized notion that the tort system amounts to a lottery for injured plaintiffs, as President Bush and others have long maintained, writes Philip G. Peters Jr. in the May edition of the Michigan Law Review. If anything, the system appears to be biased against them.”

Sandra G. Boodman, Washington Post 5/08/07

I have been getting numerous requests for our brief in the Kunz v. Little Company of Mary appeal. Click below to see our entire brief on the issue of the court's failure to allow our expert to testify on the issue of reasonableness of medical bills.

Continue reading "Kunz v. Little Company of Mary : Plaintiff's appellate brief" »

Hurley McKenna & Mertz recently won a case in the Illinois First District Appellate Court. This was a medical malpractice case brought on behalf of an elderly woman that was given too much gentamicin. This antibiotic is known to cause kidney failure when given over long periods of time. Christopher T. Hurley and Mark R. McKenna tried the case to a jury in 2005 and were awarded $3.2 million for the loss of our client's kidney function. The appellate court upheld that verdict and further ruled that the trial judge should have allowed our expert to testify on the issue of past and future medical expenses. The case was reported in the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin by John Rooney on May 7, 2007. Click below to see the Law Bulletin story.

Continue reading "Hurley McKenna & Mertz wins medical malpractice decision in Illinois Appellate Court" »