Should medical malpractice cases be heard in front of a jury, or by judge alone?  In this article Lindsay McGivern considers this question with examples from recent case law that illustrate some of the challenges and risks involved in having a complex case heard by a jury.

This is the final article in our 8-part series on medical malpractice litigation published in the Verdict law journal. In this article Susanne Raab reviews the physicians’ obligation to disclose to their patients when a medical error occurs in the provision of their health care, and also examines the consequences that flow from a failure to make these required disclosures.

This is the seventh article in our 8-part series on medical malpractice litigation published in the Verdict law journal. In this article Paul McGivern reviews how the use of experts at trial has evolved over the years, and discusses recent developments in the law.

This is the sixth article in our 8 part series on medical malpractice litigation. In this article, we will demonstrate some examples of how the causation principles are applied in medical negligence cases.

This is the fifth article in our 8 part series on medical malpractice litigation. Medical negligence is a particularly complicated area of the law, largely due to the need to establish causation. Motor vehicle accidents may have causation issues arising out of an argument about whether a particular injury was pre-existing or the result of the accident, but primary causation is relatively easy to establish: plaintiff was healthy, plaintiff was hit by a car, plaintiff is now injured. Medical negligence is rarely so clear cut. In this article we explore the complexities of causation in the medical malpractice realm.

This is the fourth article in our 8 part series on medical malpractice litigation. Even if a plaintiff has obtained some expert evidence critical of the defendant’s care, this will not necessarily lead to a finding of fault. In this article, Andrea Donaldson reviews a number of common defenses to a claim of that the defendant breached the standard of care, namely that the defendant followed an approved practice, that he or she followed one of two accepted schools of thought, or that he or she exercised his or her clinical judgment. The analyses of the courts as to how these defenses apply help to illustrate why so few medical malpractice cases that go to court are decided in favor of the plaintiff.