Medical Malpractice

Today’s medical care often results in harm to the patient. Medical malpractice involves professional mistakes by a health care provider: doctor, nurse, dentist, medical/dental office or staff. When these professionals deviate from a standard of care for their profession and harm their patients, this is what is commonly known as medical malpractice.

It has been estimated that medical errors result in as many as 98,000 unnecessary deaths and 1,000,000 excess injuries each year. (Institute of Medicine, "To Err Is Human:Building a Safer Health System, 2000).  In a 2005 study of 39 million patient records, 241,280 deaths during Medicare hospitalizations were attributable to one or more common preventable medical errors. In each year from 2001 through 2003, the study found that the number of medical errors or "patient safety incidents" at America's hospitals was approximately 1.18 million, with a cost to Medicare of nearly $3 billion annually.

Medical malpractice requires negligence on the part of the health care provider. Founding partner John Elliott Leighton is a board certified trial lawyer who is skilled at representing victims of medical mistakes. He is a charter member of the Cooperative Association of Medical Malpractice Attorneys and is a member of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America’s Birth Trauma Litigation Group, Professional Negligence Section, and Medical Negligence Information Exchange Group.

Mr. Leighton often teaches and lectures to other trial lawyers throughout the country about how best to handle and try medical malpractice cases. Some of his recent lectures in the field include:

• Liability for Failure to Admit (EMTALA), Discharge and Transfer”, Holding the Hospital Accountable seminar, ATLA/National College of Advocacy, Montreal, Canada.

• Co-Chairman, Litigating Catastrophically Injured Infant Cases, National College of Advocacy, Atlanta, GA

• Teaching Faculty and Lecturer, “Finding and Using Experts” and “Negotiation and Settlement Techniques,” Medical Trial Skills College Association of Trial Lawyers of America/National College of Advocacy, Miami, FL.

• Fundamentals of a Hospital Chart – What’s There and What’s Not,” Association of Trial Lawyers of America, Annual Convention, Seattle, WA.

Over the past 24 years, Mr. Leighton has successfully obtained many multi million dollar verdicts and settlements for clients in lawsuits involving severe birth trauma, surgical negligence, failure to timely diagnose, wrong site surgery or disfiguring injuries.

Mr. Leighton’s courtroom successes in medical malpractice cases is well recognized. In a record setting trial, Mr. Leighton won a $24.1 million verdict for a young girl who suffered cerebral palsy due to negligence in her delivery. Her mother had been seen by the obstetrician during her pregnancy. She had told him that her prior delivery was by caesarian section because the baby’s head size was too large compared to this (small) woman’s pelvis. The doctor decided that he would have the woman deliver by VBAC (vaginal birth after caesarian). She then began a long labor that lasted over two days. Instead of performing a caesarian section delivery, which would have been safer for all involved, this physician insisted on the vaginal delivery. He used a vacuum extractor (for far longer a period of time than what the manufacturer recommended) and ordered the nurses to perform fundal pressure (pressing on the abdomen to “push” the baby down the birth canal). The end result was that the mother’s uterus was ruptured, causing a loss of oxygen to the baby, nearly killing mother and child. The baby was resuscitated, but not before serious oxygen deprivation caused cerebral palsy. Mr. Leighton worked with this family over a nine year period, involving two trial and four appeals, to obtain a record breaking verdict. Shoaf v. Geiling (Seminole County, Florida).

Many families trust their cases to Mr. Leighton because of his combined understanding of the complex medical issues and his skill in the courtroom.  As a result, frequently defendants choose to settle cases before facing a jury.  Recently Mr. Leighton obtained a $9,000,000 recovery for a woman who suffered permanent brain injury following a complication of surgery.  The failure to properly monitor and treat her was tragic.  She and her family now have the resources with which to have lifetime care, educate their children, and provide a firm financial future. 

Mr. Leighton has represented many children whose deliveries were performed negligently. Mr. Leighton recently obtained a settlement of $3,750,000 for a child who suffered nerve injuries due to a traumatic delivery in Central Florida.  In another, the hospital and physicians failed to recognize that the mother was high risk and had an infection. Instead of immediately delivering the baby, they delayed and even transferred the mother to another hospital before the baby was finally delivered. The delay resulted in oxygen deprivation to the child, resulting in cerebral palsy, developmental delay, and blindness. A confidential settlement was obtained from the hospital and physician. In another case, Mr. Leighton represented the surviving spouse who lost his wife because of a surgical error. His wife delivered their child through caesarian section surgery. The surgeon failed to remove the placenta from the patient after delivery of the baby. Hours later, our client’s wife developed a high fever and dramatic infection which led to her untimely death. A confidential settlement in excess of $1.5 million was obtained to secure the financial stability of this family.

A settlement of $1,125,000 was secured by Mr. Leighton against a doctor and hospital after a woman died following a normal delivery of a healthy baby. Our client’s wife had developed a small laceration in her uterus during the birth process. Despite requests from the nurses to the doctor to deal with the bleeding, the physician returned to his office and told the staff that the bleeding would stop. It did not stop until the patient went into hypovolemic shock and died.

Mr. Leighton’s medical malpractice litigation has included cases in several other states. Because of his reputation as an aggressive, thorough trial lawyer, he has been asked to represent clients all over Florida as well as throughout the United States. He recently obtained a settlement in Illinois of $4,300,000 on behalf of the family of a 39-year-old woman who died as result of medical malpractice mother. Doctors had failed to timely diagnose and treat her brain cyst, which resulted in a brain herniation and her untimely death.

In Central Florida in 2009 Mr. Leighton obtained a $3 million recovery for the death of a young mother due to medical negligence of a hospital and its physician. Likewise a few months later, Mr. Leighton obtained a confidential settlement for the parents of a disabled child whose life was taken through medical neglect in Miami.

Mr. Leighton has also had success in litigating gastric bypass cases. These procedures have become very popular for weight loss, but are notoriously dangerous and have a surprisingly high mortality rate. Mr. Leighton was called upon to represent the family of a woman in Houston who died after undergoing a gastric bypass surgery. Mr. Leighton obtained a $1 million settlement for the family of this wife and mother after litigating the case prior to trial. He has also represented the husband of a woman who died from such a procedure in Miami (confidential settlement).

Medication errors are frequent causes of tragic cases. In one case, Mr. Leighton represented the family of a woman who was given two conflicting medications. After undergoing an elective surgery, she received two narcotics that are never to be administered together. She fell into a coma and subsequently died. Her family hired Mr. Leighton, who litigated the case and obtained a $2,575,000 settlement.

Birth trauma cases can result in some of the most substantial verdicts and settlements because of the extraordinary damage that can be caused by mistakes in delivery of babies. In a recent case, Mr. Leighton recovered a confidential settlement against a hospital and two physicians of $11,250,000 for negligence in failing to timely perform a caesarian section delivery resulting in brain damage to the newborn baby.

In what may be unbelievable to most people, wrong site surgeries account for many injuries each year. Some medical groups, including the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgery, have instituted procedures to try to prevent wrong site surgeries. Despite this, doctors continue to operate on the wrong limbs or in the wrong location. Mr. Leighton recently obtained a confidential settlement on behalf of a central Florida woman who was the victim of a wrong leg surgery. She was supposed to have her left Achilles tendon repaired. Instead, the surgeon operated on her right leg. The error was not discovered until a nurse told him that the tendon looked perfectly fine. The doctor then hastily closed that operative site and performed the correct surgery. Yet in his rush, he improperly sutured nerves into the scar, causing permanent nerve damage which should never have occurred because it was on the wrong leg. What made this case all the more compelling was what Mr. Leighton discovered during the litigation: this was the second wrong leg surgery for this doctor in a two year period.

Often preventable, surgical errors can be tragic. Mr. Leighton represented the family of a woman who underwent surgery for a herniated disk. The neurosurgeon lacerated her iliac artery and vein. She bled continuously after the surgeon completed the operation and the bleeding was not recognized until it was too late – the patient bled to death in a major medical center. A confidential settlement was obtained from the hospital and doctor.

The Myth That Medical Malpractice Cases Damage Society

The medical and insurance industries and their political lobbyists gave fabricated a "medical malpractice" myth that suggests that medical malpractice cases are frivolous, out of control or are destroying American medicine. Nothing coul dbe further from the truth.

Five Myths About Medical Negligence:

Myth #1: There are too many “frivolous” malpractice lawsuits.

Fact: There’s an epidemic of medical negligence, not lawsuits. Only one in eight people injured by medical negligence ever file suit. Civil filings have declined eight percent over the last decade, and are less than one percent of the whole civil docket. A 2006 Harvard study found that 97 percent of claims were meritorious, stating, “portraits of a malpractice system that is stricken with frivolous litigation are overblown.”

• Myth #2: Malpractice claims drive up health care costs.

Fact: According to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, the total spent defending claims and compensating victims of medical negligence was just 0.3% of health care costs, and the Congressional Budget Office and Government Accountability Office have made similar findings.

• Myth #3: Doctors are fleeing.

Fact: Then where are they going? According to the American Medical Association’s own data, the number of practicing physicians in the United States has been growing steadily for decades. Not only are there more doctors, but the number of doctors is increasing faster than population growth. Despite the cries of physicians fleeing multiple states, the number of physicians increased in every state, and only four states saw growth slower than population growth; these four states all have medical malpractice caps.

• Myth #4: Malpractice claims drive up doctors’ premiums.

Fact: Empirical research has found that there is little correlation between malpractice payouts and malpractice premiums paid by doctors. A study of the leading medical malpractice insurance companies’ financial statements by former Missouri Insurance Commissioner Jay Angoff found that these insurers artificially raised doctors’ premiums and misled the public about the nature of medical negligence claims. A previous AAJ report on malpractice insurers found they had earnings higher than 99% of Fortune 500 companies.

• Myth #5: Tort reform will lower insurance rates.

Fact: Tort reforms are passed under the guise that they will lower physicians’ liability premiums. This does not happen. While insurers do pay out less money when damages awards are capped, they do not pass the savings along to doctors by lowering premiums. Even the most ardent tort reformers have been caught stating that tort reform will have no effect on insurance rates.

Keep this in mind when people you know claim to have knowledge about medical care and medical malpractice. Medical mistakes are rampant, and most are never discovered and cases never brought. The only check on medical care that patients really have is the civil justice system.