Posted On: June 18, 2007, 5:44 pm CDT

Posted By: Mike

I am answering the questions posed by LLCJ. What about the retired person or the stay-at-home mom who is badly injured? There is no wage loss to recover. Do you think living the rest of your life with quadriplegia is fully compensated by a payment of $250,000. That figure is for noneconomic losses, such as pain, suffering, and disability. The amount that the injured person nets is reduced by the attorney fee and the costs of pursuing the case, which can be a lot. I am a lawyer and am involved in a medical malpractice case in which the costs are already more than $138,000. I expect the costs to run at least another $70,000 by the time the case is finished. That is for paying the medical expert witnesses and court reporters, and flying all over the U.S. to take experts' depositions. Our firm has already put in well over 500 hours of time into the case. How can we and our client come out in the black with a $250,000 cap? If you really knew the amount of work and expense that goes into pursuing a medical negligence case, you would understand that it is always a risky proposition agreeing to represent a plaintiff in such a case. Nationally, the doctors win over 70% of the cases, even though plaintiffs' lawyers do not take cases unless they are strong ones. A lawyer does not recover any compensation unless the lawyer's client recovers compensation. The insurance companies defend these cases to the death, so the cases that go to trial, in my experience, have merit. Jurors are so skeptical of anyone who is willing to go to court to recover compensation for injuries that they decide the cases in favor of the doctors much more than they should. There was an article that was published last month the concluded that American juries are very biased in favor of the doctors in these cases. There are many easier ways of earning a living than taking on the doctors' insurance companies.