Personal Injury Lawsuits: Hospitals and Clinics Adjust To Increase in Infection Injury Malpractice Cases
Medical malpractice lawsuits are on the rise against hospital and other clinics for victims of serious or life-threatening infections-infections that could have been prevented. Most importantly, juries are holding the hospitals responsible for failing to prevent the resulting infections, according to a December 2008 Lawyers USA article, outlining many settlements or verdicts.
For example, the article referred to a November 6, 2008 jury verdict of $13.5 million to a Massachusetts woman who died of an infection caused by flesh-being bacteria after she underwent cancer treatment. Historically, many medical malpractice lawyers have refused to accept personal injury cases relating to infection contraction, because infection can be a known complication of most surgeries and procedures. However, where circumstances can be shown that prove a hospital or clinic violate a specific standard of care directed to avoiding infection, it seems that juries are paying attention and penalizing hospitals for the careless or negligent conduct. The rising standards are based on CDC recommendations, and the "Joint Commission" compendium of infection safeguards–for the full article by my personal injury/medical malpractice trial attorney-partner Jim Lewis, please click here.
