Plaintiff Trial Lawyer Tips

I have some personal views about plaintiff representation of a medical malpractice case based upon experience and research. The basic ones include: (1) trials are struggles for juror impression and not a contest of rational logic. (2) Values and strongly held beliefs along with significant past experiences have a powerful impact on decisions vs rational logic and (3) proof of betrayal is significantly more powerful than proof of a medical mistake or negligence. To outline what we all know from…

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The majority of states have a law like Washington’s regarding the issue of exercise of medical judgment. Our law provides (WP 1 05.08) : “A physician is not liable for selecting one of two or more alternative courses of treatment, if in arriving at the judgment to follow a particular course of treatment, the physician exercised reasonable care and skill within the standard of care the physician was obligated to follow.”                         Preventing or Minimizing Risk of Serious Medical Complications agree…

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Medical malpractice cases are some of the more difficult liability cases we are asked to handle for injured clients. In these cases, words and phrases can often be of particular importance. For example, statements that combine common sense with ideas of negligence are powerful: “Caution and double checking is a part of good medical care.” Another idea is when introducing a statement consider using rhetorical questions rather than statements. For example: Why are we here? What did the doctor do…

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