Posts tagged Medical Malpractice

• Charitable Immunity is Unjust

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

  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,...

• Hospital Falls

  Ken Margolin | September 17, 2007 3:45 PM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA Category: Head & Brain Injuries
  

  A great deal of attention has been paid lately - rightfully so - to the subject of infections contracted in hospitals. Less focus has been placed on another source of serious and preventable injuries in hospitals - falls. The result of a fall down injury in a hospital may be severe. Patients are ill and often debilitated or disoriented to begin with. If a patient's condition presents any...

• Deadly Medication Errors

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

  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 Category: Medical Malpractice
  

  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 Category: Medical Malpractice
  

  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 Category: Medical Malpractice
  

  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 Category: Medical Malpractice
  

  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 Category: Medical Malpractice
  

  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...

• The Video Settlement Brochure

  Ken Margolin | June 22, 2007 12:20 PM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA Category: Head & Brain Injuries
  

  In a previous blog, I wrote about day-in-the-life videos. These are videos that film a severely injured plaintiff and capture vignettes of a typical day, in a 20 - 30 minute movie. If done properly, they can be shown to a jury at trial. Another tool that any lawyer representing a client with catastrophic injuries may consider, is a video settlement brochure. In the video settlement brochure, the...

• Mediation of Personal Injury Cases

  Ken Margolin | May 31, 2007 7:00 AM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA Category: Head & Brain Injuries
  

  Clients often ask me if "my case will have to go to court?" By that question, they mean, will it have to be tried before a jury, or will it settle "out of court." Most clients, even those who appreciate that they could get significantly more money with a verdict than through settlement, prefer the surety of a settlement over the high stakes gamble of a big score vs. nothing. Sometimes a case...