Many personal injury cases involve traumatic brain injury (TBI) cause by a closed head injury. The severity of TBI can vary quite widely, with a correspondingly wide range of damages. See generally https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/traumatic-brain-injury/symptoms-causes/syc-20378557.
On December 5, 2018 a class action lawsuit was filed against Pacific Gas & Electric – Burnett v. PG&E Corporation, https://www.classaction.org/media/burnett-et-al-v-pg-and-e-corporation-et-al.pdf. Paragraphs 4 and 5 of the complaint summarize the plaintiffs’ allegations 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
Material for a law-related blog sometimes comes from an unexpected source.
The South Dakota Supreme Court recently upheld summary judgment against the plaintiff in an auto accident case who failed to submit an affidavit from a medical expert on the issue of causation. Cooper v.
A recent opinion of the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Kopplin v. Wisconsin Central Limited, http://media.ca7.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/rssExec.pl?Submit=Display&Path=Y2019/D02-01/C:17-3602:J:Sykes:aut:T:fnOp:N:2286594:S:0, is an excellent reminder that a case can fail without a well-chosen and properly prepared expert witness.
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.
