Back in 2002, medical malpractice plaintiffs whose cases were heard in Philly courts were more than twice as likely to win jury trials as the national average—and more than half their awards were for $1 million or more. Naturally, everybody wanted his med-mal suit tried in Philly, with its big-city juries full of underclass citizens favoring the underdog going up against the big, bad surgeon.
But that year, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court made two significant changes in its rules: It required medical malpractice actions to be brought in the county where the cause of action took place, and it required that attorneys procure a “certificate of merit” from a medical professional stating that the medical procedures in the case lay outside acceptable professional standards. The first change was intended to eliminate venue-shopping, the process in which plaintiffs sought to have their cases heard in the venue most likely to yield positive results. (The plaintiff win rate in Philly back then was three times that of Pittsburgh’s Allegheny County.) The second was meant to eliminate frivolous claims. The rule changes were subsequently codified into state law.
Now, a decade later, the Supreme Court has released a report on the results of changes. In Pennsylvania overall, medical malpractice lawsuits are down 44.1 percent from the base years of 2000-2002; in Philly, they’re down a whopping 65 percent. The total number of med-mal filings in the city fell from 1,365 in 2003 to 577 in 2011—a 58 percent decrease. While Philly still won the honor of being designated the nation’s “Number One Judicial Hellhole” by the American Tort Reform Foundation in 2010 and 2011, the medical-malpractice numbers show progress is possible.
Sandy Hingston is exactly right: progress is indeed possible. Pennsylvania’s high court and legislature took on runaway medical lawsuits in Philadelphia and dramatically reduced the abuse of the system as it existed.
More recently, Philadelphia’s Chief Administrative Judge John Herron issued on February 15 of this year a sweeping 15-point reform order that, if actually adhered to by trial judges at the Complex Litigation Center, should go a long way in reducing the plaintiff-friendly bias for which the City of Brotherly Torts had become known in recent years, particularly with respect to asbestos and mass tort claims.
Nothing would make us at the American Tort Reform Association happier than removing Philadelphia from our annual list of Judicial Hellholes. And if lawmakers in Harrisburg enact a much needed venue reform bill that would apply beyond medical lawsuits, and if Philadelphia’s judiciary lives up to both the letter and spirit of Judge Herron’s reform order, we’re very likely to do just that.
Darren McKinney
American Tort Reform Association
Washington, D.C.
True progress would be if the number of incidents of malpractice were down. Unfortunately, hospitals in Pennsylvania and elsewhere remain dangerous places. The Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority just published its annual statistics and they show a much more disturbing trend.
As with almost every year since tort reform passed the number of errors resulting in injury and deaths has again risen in PA.
Tort reform diverts our attention from the true problem–that malpractice exists and is not being reduced. The number of lawsuits filed is far below the number of people harmed by medical errors.
To reduce lawsuits without reducing the number of people harmed is unjust, unfair, and bad policy. To drive down the number of lawsuits holding wrongdoers accountable while the number of preventable errors continues to rise is folly.
Mr. McKinney, a director of the American Tort (De)form Association, has some basic facts down but unfortunately has his heart in the wrong place. All of the work that ATRA does in efforts to drive down medical lawsuits is in the sole name of protecting extreme, hyper-business corporate policies. As part of the largest lobbying network in the country, Mr. McKinney and ATRA sit in Washington, D.C. and try to influence politicians in states nation-wide to line the pockets of the 1% with profit dividends.
ATRA runs a streamlined public relations campaign to exacerbate any medical malpractice story that fits an extreme story angle. Unfortunately, 99% of the cases in medical malpractice instances in Pennsylvania are coming from people who have been unfairly hurt physically or economically due to hospitals negligence. Take the story of Heather Lewinsky who was horribly scarred for life due to a Pittsburgh doctor’s preventable tearing of her facial tissue. Due to Mr. McKinney’s extreme corporate lobbying efforts, Heather was unable to receive the amount the jury awarded her.
There are hundreds, if not thousands of stories just like Heather’s in Pennsylvania but it is in the interest of Mr. McKinney and ATRA to make it impossible for consumers to get a fair day in court.
Furthermore, Mr. McKinney’s “Judicial Hellhole” report has been debunked by Law Professors, Legal Analysts, and nonpartisan civil justice protection groups for years. As we pointed out in our “Justice for Philadelphia Courts” report, the Judicial Hellholes report has been called, “substantively inaccurate and methodologically flawed” multiple times over. No one takes the report seriously any more and now that it is based off of complete bias polling of corporate interest based attorneys.
Judge Herron’s recent one-man act of changing Philadelphia’s judicial administrative rules is going to be scaled back considerably in the weeks ahead due to outside criticism from the Philadelphia legal community on the right and left side. Judge Herron has realized the changes he implemented were far too extreme than he intended and was unfortunately influenced by extreme corporate groups like ATRA.
Finally, it should be noted that ATRA are long-time supporters and advisers to the 1% corporate lobbying group the American Legislative Exchange Council. ALEC was behind the support of the Stand Your Ground law in Florida that lead to Trayvon Martin’s murder. ALEC’s “civil justice task force” that ATRA has supported has been drafting word-for-word legislation on tort law to support hyper corporate interests for years. All while sitting in Washington, D.C. without Pennsylvania citizens’ best interests in mind but rather the 1% corporate interests.
Mr. McKinney is and ATRA is nothing more than a puppet of the largest corporations in the world (Exxon, Tobacco companies) that will stop at nothing to take away our civil rights and provide corporations with billions in profit.