Posted On: March 20, 2008, 10:18 pm CDT

Posted By: Mike End

If a driver goes through a red light and injures you, do you think it is fair for you to be compensated for the injuries caused by the negligent driver? Medical negligence cases are pursued on the same principle, that the negligent party should make the injured person whole, as best as possible. The people who have written comments for this article apparently do not realize the extent of medical negligence, nor the difficulty injured patients have in winning meritorious cases to juries comprised of skeptical people like you. Do you think a lawyer is taking a risk when the lawyer spends 500 hours of time and $100,000 in costs to take a case to trial, knowing that the chances of winning are about one in five? There are many articles in the medical and legal literature documenting that juries favor doctors over injured patients, frequently denying compensation to patients when even the insurance company for the doctor recognized that the doctor had negligently injured the patient. In Wisconsin, where I am from, there were only four payments made to people injured by medical negligence for every 1,000 practicing doctors in the state. Think about it. Statistically, a doctor practicing here can expect a payment made for the doctor's negligence once every 250 years of the doctor's practice of medicine. I am a lawyer. My four-lawyer firm has three full-time nurses who work here. We carefully screen cases to ensure that they have merit. Despite that, we lose far more cases than we win, at enormous cost of time and expense. We are not greedy sharks. We are just trying, usually unsuccessfully, to help people receive the compensation that they deserve because of injuries negligently inflicted by doctors.