Legal Medicine

Legal Pearls: Defense Verdicts for Doctors

  • The Elements of Medical Malpractice

    In order for a plaintiff to win a medical malpractice case, they need to be able to prove 4 elements:

    1. A duty of care owed to the patient
    2. A breach of that duty
    3. Injury resulting from the breach
    4. Damages as a result of the injury

    Without all 4 of these elements, a medical malpractice case will fail.

    The first element—duty of care—is always present in a physician-patient relationship. But the other 3 elements must be proven.

    In this case, the patient’s family was alleging that he breached his duty to his patient by failing to order a CT with contrast, and that as a result, her condition was not diagnosed in time to prevent her death. The physician was alleging that he made a valid decision to order the CT without contrast because he did not believe the patient’s kidneys could tolerate the dye.

    The case ultimately went to the jury to decide whether he had breached his duty. After 2 hours of deliberations, the jury came back with a verdict for the physician. His relieved attorney stated after the verdict, “I think our theme all along had been that you had a delicate patient. You can’t always give the particular test that you want for any given patient, because that person may have contraindications or other diseases, and it doesn’t allow you to give the best test.”

    The Takeaway

    The physician, when he considered contrast vs noncontrast CT took into consideration the patient’s poor kidney function, decided based on this information that it was too dangerous for the patient to use contrast dye, and then noted this reasoning in the patient’s chart. While any number of things could have played into the jury’s finding that he did not breach his duty, it was certainly helpful that he had written documentation about why he made that decision at that time.

    Bottom Line—There is little point in worrying about being hit with a medical malpractice case, but there most definitely is a point to doing the best for each individual patient and being clear about why you have made each decision for each patient.