By Alex Stein A recent California Supreme Court decision, Rashidi v. Moser, — P.3d —- (Cal. 2014), must be read by anyone interested in medical malpractice and in torts generally. This decision involved a very serious incident of medical malpractice. A patient underwent surgery to stop severe nosebleed. His doctor ran a catheter through an artery in his leg…
By Alex Stein In its recent decision, Zauflik v. Pennsbury School Dist., — A.3d —- (Pa. 2014), the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania upheld the constitutionality of the statutory $500,000 cap on tort compensation payable by the local government. This decision was delivered in a case involving a student who lost her leg in an accident in…
By Alex Stein The West Virginia Supreme Court has recently delivered a super-important malpractice decision, Manor Care, Inc. v. Douglas, — S.E.2d —- (W. Va. 2014), holding that suits for nursing-home neglects sound in general negligence, rather than medical malpractice, and are consequently not subject to damage caps. This decision is very well reasoned and I expect…
By Alex Stein California’s referendum initiative to make an inflation-based adjustment to the state’s 39-years old $250,000 cap on noneconomic damages for medical malpractice moves forward. See here. The California Medical Association (CMA) unsurprisingly opposes this initiative. According to CMA, “The $250,000 cap on non-economic damages is an effective way of limiting frivolous lawsuits.” This is…
By Alex Stein We are just in mid-March, but yesterday’s decision of the Florida Supreme Court, McCall v. United States, — So.3d —-, 2014 WL 959180 (Fla. 2014), is – and will likely remain – the most important medical malpractice decision of 2014. The case at bar presented a particularly egregious example of medical malpractice: a…
By Alex Stein In Virginia and many other states, statutory caps limit the amount of compensation that an aggrieved patient can recover from her doctor. To bypass this limit, a victim of medical malpractice may want not to be considered a “patient.” This motivation brought the IS FETUS A PATIENT? question to the Virginia Supreme Court in Simpson v….
By Alex Stein The New York Times has recently reported about a suit filed by ACLU against the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops for requiring Catholic hospitals to avoid abortion “even when doing so places a woman’s health or life at risk.” The suit unfolds a disturbing story about an 18-week pregnant woman who rushed…
By Alex Stein Damage caps are widespread. A typical cap provision precludes medical malpractice victims from recovering more than a specified sum for pain, suffering and other noneconomic harms. These caps vary between $250,000 (as in California that might soon increase its cap by a referendum) and a $1,500,000-$500,000 scale (as in Florida). Some state supreme…
