|
 
Professor Philip Peters
says juries actually sympathize more with doctors than patients.
|
Sue
Your Doctor? You May Not Win
By Bryan Daniels
There's a common belief that juries frequently side with patients
in lawsuits involving medical malpractice. A legal professor at
the University of Missouri-Columbia's School
of Law insists that's not the case.
Philip Peters, who is the Ruth L. Hulston
Professor of Law at MU, said that contrary to popular belief,
juries actually sympathize more with doctors and less with their
patients. The determination was made following an extensive review
of numerous studies examining malpractice cases from 1989 to 2006.
The studies focused on all medical specialties and evaluated expert
medical opinions and the merits of malpractice claims. Peters'
research involves medical negligence cases from New Jersey, Michigan
and North Carolina; cases of national significance; and those
involving major insurers.
“The data show that defendants and their
hired experts are more successful than plaintiffs and their hired
experts at persuading juries to reach verdicts that are contrary
to the evidence,” Peters said.
He found that:
- Negligence matters and plaintiffs rarely
win weak cases. Plaintiffs have more success in toss-up cases
and have better outcomes in cases with strong evidence of medical
negligence.
- Juries have the ability to recognize weak
cases and agree with independent legal experts 80 to 90 percent
of the time regarding such cases.
- Doctors are victorious in 50 percent of
the cases that independent legal experts expected plaintiffs to
win.
- Factors systematically favor medical
defendants in the courtroom. Those factors include the defendant's
superior resources, the social standing of physicians, social
norms against “profiting” by injury and the jury's willingness
to give physicians the “benefit of the doubt” when the
evidence of negligence is conflicting.
“When the jury is in doubt after hearing the conflicting
experts, the benefit of that doubt usually goes to the defendant,” Peters said. “This is the opposite of the assumption made
by critics of jury decision making.”
An abstract is
available online. The complete article, “Doctors &
Juries,” has been published in the May edition of the Michigan
Law Review.
Archives
| Comments | Home SUBSCRIPTIONS
Subscribe
| Change Your
Address | Unsubscribe
Copyright © 2007 — Curators of the University of Missouri
DMCA and other copyright information.
All rights reserved.
An equal opportunity/ADA institution.
Published by the Mizzou Alumni Association
Questions? Comments? E-mail comments@mizzoualumni.org
Last Update:
November 15, 2007
|
