The Medical Malpractice Litigation System

“The Medical Malpractice Litigation System” provides a description of the conventional legal response to negligent adverse events. First, it discusses the origins, nature, and purposes (usually given as compensation and deterrence) of the tort system; explains the economic analysis of tort law (including the concept of negligence), and describes some of the specialized rules that apply only to medical malpractice torts. Most of the chapter is a data-based walk-through of the stages of the malpractice litigation process, including the proportion of cases that enter and proceed through each stage: initiation of claims (including attorney screening), pretrial disposition, trials, verdicts, compensation awards, and adjustments following verdicts. The evidence shows that the great majority of negligently caused injuries never enter the system, trials are rare, and negotiation plays so great a part that the system is best characterized as one of “litigotiation.”