The Kansas Supreme Court recently struck down a $250,000 statutory cap on noneconomic damages in all personal injury cases, holding that the statute violated the right to a jury trial guaranteed by the Kansas Constitution. Hilburn v. Enerpipe, http://www.kscourts.org/Cases-and-Opinions/opinions/SupCt/2019/20190614/112765.pdf (6/14/2019). In doing so, the court reversed a 7-year-old precedent, Miller v.
Vident Partners provides medical malpractice experts to both plaintiff and defense attorneys. And over the 15 years that we’ve been in business we’ve seen a wide variety of issues, most of which we’ve been able to service with skilled, on-point experts. But a recent article by Dr.
In Azmat v. Bauer, http://opinions.kycourts.net/sc/2016-SC-000560-DG.pdf, the Kentucky Supreme Court addressed an unusual but interesting issue concerning the unauthorized practice of law in the “next friend” context.
The full caption of the case is Sameena Azmat, as Mother and Next Friend of Nausher Azmat v. George W. Bauer, MD et al. The court explained this type of lawsuit as follows:
This case points up the extreme care and attention to detail that a plaintiff’s attorney must exercise in reviewing an expert’s affidavit in opposition to summary judgment. The case is Fernandez v. Alexander (Calif. Ct.
In a previous post I discussed negligent credentialing, a theory of recovery that enables a patient to hold a hospital liable for injuries caused by an independent contractor physician. This is not vicarious liability – that is, the hospital is not liable for the physician’s negligence merely because the physician breached the standard of care in a particular case. Rather, the hospital is directly liable for its own negligence if the physician is so manifestly incompetent or unqualified that the hospital should not have given him or her staff privileges, because in those circumstances it
Under the ancient common law doctrine of respondeat superior, a hospital is liable for the negligence of a physician who is an employee of the hospital, but is not liable for the negligence of an independent physician who has staff privileges to practice at the hospital, i.e., an independent contractor. However, a hospital can be liable if it should not have granted staff privileges to the independent physician in the first place. This theory of direct hospital liability, called negligent credentialing, is recognized in more than 30 states. The Missouri Supreme Court ha
As I mentioned in a previous post, almost all of the states have enacted a variety of laws that treat medical malpractice cases differently from all other torts. “Medical malpractice reform proponents argue that tort reforms – such as limiting malpractice awards, tightening statutes of limitations for filing claims and screening cases before they go to trial – not only reduce overall medical care spending, but also increase access to care.
In response to skyrocketing medical malpractice insurance premiums in the 1970s and 80s, states began enacting a variety of “tort reform” laws that treat medical malpractice differently from all other torts.
As an expert witness referral service, we provide experts in all fields of specialization for all types of litigation. One of the core areas of litigation that we are involved with is medical malpractice.
An important question in medical malpractice cases is whether the plaintiff’s standard of care expert must be board certified in the same specialty as the defendant, or must at least practice in the same area of specialization without board certification. Many states have enacted controlling statutes on this issue. If the answer to the “same specialty” question is yes, the plaintiff frequently needs two experts – one to opine on the standard of care, and one to address causation. In a 2018 case, the South Carolina Supreme Court carefully construed the relevant statute and held that, unde
