A 1999 study estimated that between 44,000 and 98,000 Americans die each year in hospitals from medical errors. This does not include the tens of thousands who do not die but whose medical conditions are substantially worsened due to medical negligence in both hospitals and doctor’s offices. 

 

With these kinds of numbers you would think that it would be easy to win a medical malpractice suit, yet the majority of medical malpractice cases tried in New York are won by the defense. This is because the law favors the doctors, the insurance industry has biased jurors in favor of the medical profession by falsely creating a medical malpractice crisis, the insurance companies have good lawyers defending the doctors, and the insurance industry has no trouble getting good doctors to testify on the defendant doctor’s behalf.

Medical malpractice takes many forms, and we have represented injured plaintiffs in all kinds of cases. It can sometimes be as simple and obvious as leaving a surgical retractor blade inside the abdomen during a gall bladder surgery or as complicated as failing to properly monitor the calcium levels in a newborn with a heart defect that caused a heart arrest, anoxia, and brain damage. It can be due to erroneously injecting chemotherapy agents to treat cancer into the breast tissue with accompanying breast necrosis instead of into the vein through a port-a-cath, or it can be due to failing to timely recognize and treat a drug reaction. It can be due to failing to timely diagnose a fracture or failing to properly reduce and set a fracture after it was diagnosed. It can be due to a nurse failing to observe appropriate fall precautions or a laboratory computer failing to properly count and interpret blood platlets.