Medical Malpractice

• Fake Studies for Medical Malpractice Defense

  Ken Margolin | April 09, 2007 11:20 AM | 2 CommentsBoston, MA

  Today's Boston Globe carried an article with the title, "Bed sores aren't always a sign of negligent care." Having written blogs on this site, suggesting that severe pressures sores are usually caused by nursing home negligence, I read the Globe piece carefully (the law firm of Stark & Stark, has an excellent blog on the subject). My radar went up when I read the sentence that "[T[he sentiment...

• Solutions to the Medication Error Crisis

  Ken Margolin | October 09, 2006 12:48 PM | 1 CommentBoston, MA

  Medication errors injure an estimated 1.5 million Americans each year. That staggering number is reported in studies conducted by the medical profession and pharmaceutical industries themselves. While there is no single cure for this terrible problem, borne ironically, of the tools used to cure disease, the steps to be taken to greatly reduce the problem have been understood for more than 10...

• Charitable Immunity is Unjust

  Ken Margolin | September 19, 2007 7:00 AM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA

  Protecting charitable organizations from liability for the negligence of the organization or its employees, may sound noble, but is in fact, unfair. The immunity doesn't really accomplish its goals, and insures that employees of an organization involved in a personal injury lawsuit, will be sued instead of the organization. Here's the way it works in Massachusetts. By statute, M.G.L. c. 231,...

• Deadly Medication Errors

  Ken Margolin | September 14, 2007 6:00 PM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA

  The problem of medication errors has by now been well-reviewed, and efforts to minimize such errors are underway in hospitals and doctors' offices across the country. Nevertheless, the problem of medication errors has proven to be a very stubborn one. In his groundbreaking book, "To Err is Human," Lucien Leape, M.D., estimated that medication errors caused approximately 98,000 deaths per year....

• A Medical Malpractice Claim Lost

  Ken Margolin | August 21, 2007 3:15 PM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA

  A couple of weeks ago, a Suffolk County Superior Court jury in Boston, rejected the claim of former New England Patriots offensive coordinator, Charlie Weis, that doctors botched his gastric bypass surgery. The defense verdict came at the end of the second trial of the case. The first jury hearing the case was deadlocked, leading to a mistrial. Weis had claimed that his surgeons allowed...

• The Power of Exhibits

  Ken Margolin | August 20, 2007 11:15 AM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA

  I wonder if anyone has ever calculated the number of words per hour spoken during the average jury trial. The right words, used the right way, can evoke the most powerful of images, associations, and emotions. Words can also drone on and become little more than background noise to the listener. The lawyer trying a case involving catastrophic personal injury, has a challenge. He may need to...

• Wrong Site Surgeries

  Ken Margolin | August 06, 2007 4:10 PM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA

  An article in Saturday's Boston Globe illustrated the gap that sometimes exists between written procedures and implementation. The article also highlighted the ongoing danger from surgeries on the wrong part of a patient's body. Five hundred fifty-two cases of wrong-site surgery have been reported by American hospitals since 1995; there are undoubtedly many unreported cases. The incident covered...

• Failure to Communicate can be Deadly

  Ken Margolin | July 12, 2007 9:00 AM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA

  Imagine a plane crash in which the co-pilot knew of another plane on a collision course, but decided not to tell the pilot, figuring he'd get the information on his own. Imagine a firefighter knowing a roof is about to collapse, but failing to warn his colleagues because he thought his colleagues were highly skilled and the signs of impending collapse were obvious. Unthinkable? Of course. Yet,...

• Victims of Medical Malpractice Face a Hard Fight

  Ken Margolin | July 11, 2007 11:45 AM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA

  This week's Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly newspaper reported a defendant's verdict in a sad case. The plaintiff had suffered a massive stroke leaving him paralyzed on half of his body and with other terrible deficits. The allegation was that the stroke was caused due to mismanagement of lung surgery following pneumonia. The case was tried by an attorney considered to be a very fine plaintiff's...

• Dropped Clues Lead to Medical Malpractice and Patient Death

  Ken Margolin | May 23, 2007 7:00 AM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA

  A doctor can no more afford to ignore clues provided by his patient, than a homicide detective can fail to dust the crime scene for fingerprints. The best internists would undoubtedly make great detectives. When the body provides clues that something is not working properly, the doctor must follow the clues until he diagnoses the cause of the troubling symptom. In fairness to physicians, the...