Orange County Medical Malpractice Attorney’s Overview
As we’ve discussed on our medical malpractice attorney page, cases in this area of the law can be quite complex and labyrinthine, necessitating the team of experts including a medical malpractice lawyer and medical experts who can testify about proper medical procedure and whether in fact a breach of care took place a particular case. In the realm of medicine we are dealing with people’s lives and sometimes medical mistakes can cost lives or do severe damage.
Orange County medical malpractice is a challenging area
That was the case recently in Maryland (2014) where a jury awarded a woman from Prince Georges County $229 million in a verdict in her favor and against the physicians and hospital where the woman was treated. In brief, doctors misdiagnosed the viability of the woman’s unborn child and as a result the woman declined to have a C-section. The medical staff stopped monitoring the baby and as a result it did not get oxygen for some time. When the child was born it had cerebral palsy and needed round-the-clock care.
The award was the largest ever, even though the amount was reduced to $205 million by a judge due to the Maryland state cap on such awards. Lawyers for the plaintiff in this case stated that this award was much larger then the damages the plaintiff was seeking which goes to point out the flexibility that juries have been deciding how much to award in such cases.
This is actually the subject of some study and books have been written about the psychology of juries when determining awards to plaintiffs. One such book is “Determining damages: The psychology of jury awards. Law and public policy” written in 2003 by Greene and Bornstein.
Well some claims that the awards by juries in personal injury cases, including medical malpractice, tend to be capricious and punitive, the authors disagree and site statistics that show that there is great consistency in the way juries have handled such awards. As an Orange County medical malpractice attorney, having some insight into the way juries function is helpful.
Medical malpractice in Orange County does not happen with regularity. We can be thankful for that, but we are not immune to the occurrence in our part of California. As we’ve said cases like this are complex. It’s important, if you feel that you have been the victim of medical malpractice, to enlist a seasoned malpractice attorney to navigate the maze that these types of cases invariably create. If you do feel you have such a case please give us a call Kyle Scott Law in Tustin for a free case evaluation. 714-544-1460.