The Medical Malpractice Myth: Legal Analysis Finds That Patients Fare Poorly in Court

Geoff Trachtenberg

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As any medical malpractice attorney worth their salt will tell you, there is absolutely no epidemic of plaintiffs' medical malpractice verdicts. As these attorneys know, very,very few medical malpractice cases are worth pursuing and fewer still result in a monetary award or settlement. Indeed, it is somewhat laughable that so-called tort reformers advance medical malpractice caps of $250,000 since there are so few awards that are in excess of $250,000 and the very few that do, are clearly worth more -- afterall, would $250,000 be enough if the victim of the medical malpractice was a doctor?

Anyway, don't take my word for it, read what a law professor at the University of Missouri at Columbia has concluded concerning medical malpractice verdicts:

There is no empirical evidence to support the much-publicized notion that the tort system amounts to a lottery for injured plaintiffs, as President Bush and others have long maintained, writes Philip G. Peters Jr. in the May edition of the Michigan Law Review. If anything, the system appears to be biased against them.