Med Mal Jury Awards Climbed In 2000

By Susanne Sclafane

NU Online News Service, Mar. 25, 3:18 p.m.EST?Taking a medical malpractice case to trial, agenerally successful strategy for doctors and hospitals in recentyears, can backfire, according to a just-released study by JuryVerdict Research.

With the median jury award of $1 million in 2000, up from$700,000 in 1999, the strategy can result in big-time payouts forthose defendants that roll the dice and lose in court, the studyrevealed.

Medical malpractice defendants win cases brought to juriesroughly 62 percent of the time, the Horsham, Pa.-based firmreported in its analysis, "Medical Malpractice: Verdicts,Settlements and Statistical Analysis."

While the plaintiff recovery rate was up slightly?from 34percent in 1999 to 38 percent in 2000?the rate has remained below40 percent throughout the seven-year period covered in the study(1994-2000).

(Jury Verdict Research defines "recovery rate" as ratio ofplaintiff verdicts to defense verdicts and does not include casesof admitted liability in these ratios.)

Over the same seven-year period, however, the median size ofjury awards nearly tripled, rising from $362,500 in 1994 to$1,000,000 in 2000.

Settlement values were also steadily rising over the five-yearperiod from 1994 to 1999, but that trend seemed to reverse in 2000,according to statistics set forth in the study.

According to the report, the nationwide median settlement rosefrom $350,000 in 1994 to $592,074 in 1999, but fell 16 percent to$500,000 in 2000 (the same median recorded for 1998.)

In addition to overall nationwide median awards, recovery ratesand settlement values, the 95-page report contains detailedstatistics by type of defendant (doctor, hospital or both) and bytype of liability situation (such as cancer misdiagnosis,childbirth cases and delay treatment cases, for example).

The report also shows jury award and settlement value medians byinjury type, with injury types ranging from brain injury toemotional distress.

In addition, the report sets forth information on thedistributions of awards and settlement values by size for theseven-year period. Such distributions give the percentage of awardsthat fall within different dollar ranges. For example, the studyshows that 15 percent of jury awards were in the $250,000-$499,999range over the period, while 5 percent exceeded $10 million.

Statistics on litigation timeframes are also presented in thereport. According to the study, the median number of months fromincident date to trial date and the number of months from filingdate to trial date have each declined over the seven-year periodstudied.

For 1994 jury awards, the lag between incident and trial datewas more than five years, and there was a three-year lag betweenfiling date and trial date. Cases for which a jury reached averdict in 2000 took less than four years to come to trial after amedical incident occurred and two years to come to trial after thecases were filed.

Copies of the study are available from Jury Verdict Research for$32.50 plus $4.50 shipping and handling, by logging on to www.juryverdictresearch.com,calling 1-800-341-7874, ext. 307, or by e-mail [email protected].

Jury Verdict Research maintains a nationwide database of morethan 193,500 plaintiff and defense verdicts, and settlementsresulting from personal injury claims.