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Friday, January 31, 2003Obstetricians face more suits than any other specialty, more than two per career on average, and claims for neurologically impaired infants make up 30 percent of them, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. The average award by juries in such cases is about $1 million, the college says. About 8,000 babies are diagnosed each year with cerebral palsy, a chronic condition involving problems with muscle control that can include difficulty walking and speaking. Overall, about a half-million Americans have the disorder. That means that cerebral palsy is an $8 billion a year industry for malpractice lawyers. Predictably, they aren't happy: ''I see the sole purpose of this report as to give defense experts a document that they can cite in the courtroom in their efforts to convince jurors that negligent medical care does not cause cerebral palsy,'' said Dov Apfel, a Maryland-based plaintiffs' lawyer and specialist on birth injury cases. ''This is not a medical research paper.'' Lee Tilson, another malpractice lawyer, called the report ''dangerous, intellectually indefensible, and morally irresponsible.'' ''By promoting the argument that [fetal distress in labor] almost never causes brain injury to the fetus, this publication may cause obstetricians to ignore early signs of fetal distress in labor,'' he said in a statement. Well, that's not what the report says. It says that cerebral palsy is almost never caused by fetal distress in labor. The two aren’t the same. But then, distinctions like that are often lost on malpractice lawyers. posted by Sydney on 1/31/2003 06:39:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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