In a study published in the May edition of the Michigan Law Review, Professor Philip D. Peters, Jr. states that
The efforts of the Bush administration to reform the tort system on medical malpractice and decrying ‘runaway’ jury verdicts was phony.
Studies which were examined showed this claim to be unsupported by actual data. The study also revealed that juries are “more likely to defer to the judgment of a physician defendant” and that plaintiffs are successful only in about 27% of all medical malpractice cases that go to trial.
Our jury system favors the defendant doctor in a medical malpractice case and juries are more willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the defendant doctor in a case where the evidence is confusing or complicated. Other reasons for the success in defending doctors in malpractice cases include the defending insurance company’s superior economic resources and the defendant doctor’s social standing, as well as cultural prohibitions against a plaintiff seeming to profit from an injury.
Source: Washington Post
