In today’s Think Piece, you’ll learn why medical literature is so important in your medical malpractice case, and how to use medical literature to win. Please click the link to watch the video, or read the overview below.
Overview: Here’s a quick story about taking advantage of a mistake plaintiffs commonly make: Plaintiffs’ expert testified at deposition that our health care providers breached the standard of care, but had no medical literature to support his opinion. Our expert, however, was armed with medical literature and supported our health care providers beautifully. At trial, we filed a Motion to preclude the plaintiffs from using any medical literature, because they did not provide any. We used ours. The jury liked our expert better because he had support beyond his opinion.
The Maryland Rules allow us to use medical literature at trial through a hearsay exception. This applies to well-recognized textbooks like Williamsor standards by ACOG. While the jury cannot take it back as an exhibit, we can use the medical literature at trial and read it into evidence – and that’s exactly what we recommend you do, every time.
We usually talk about standard of care in terms of physicians. Today, we are talking about it in terms of us, your lawyers. At Waranch & Brown, we believe it is standard of care to arm our experts with the salient medical literature. If they cannot find it, we do the research and find the literature. Either way, we show up at an expert’s deposition with medical literature to support the defense of our doctors.
Bottom line: The standard of care is to arm your experts with medical literature. It increases their credibility and helps you WIN.
If you have any questions about this medical malpractice defense strategy, or anything else, please contact us.