Side note: Must be an election year! One of the biggest races shaping up this year is the Senatorial seat currently being held by the powerful Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid. His primary challenger, Sharron Angle, the Republican candidate, wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Candidate Angle believes that heath care can be made […]

side note: This doesn’t pass the sniff test. The Louisiana state legislature recently passed a law that forbids access to the state’s excess liability medical malpractice insurance fund to doctors that perform abortions. Of course, those doctors still must pay into the fund, but cannot access it because those doctors choose to perform a specific, […]

Side Note: this article from the Wall Street Journal blog reports on new challenges to caps on non-economic damages in Nevada malpractice cases.  Opponents of tort reform are arguing that the cap is per claim, not per event, a murky point in the law.  This development is cause for concern, as Nevada has had problems […]

Side Note: The Wisconsin Supreme Court has found that the state must repay $200M that it took out of the state patient compensation fund for malpractice.  This is a victory for the Wisconsin Medical Association, and for health care consumers in Wisconsin.  A solvent patient compensation fund keeps medical malpractice insurance premiums stable, and in […]

Side Note: This article from the Associated Press describes one New York judge’s unique approach to the problems of the U.S. malpractice system.  Judge McKeon call his approach “judge-directed negotiations”, and focuses on humanizing malpractice cases and patiently working with all parties to reach a fair resolution.  The New York City court system has received a grant of […]

Side note: A bill is being sponsored in New Jersey to help bring that state’s medical malpractice system under control. Hopefully, the bill would also help to reverse the increasingly problematic doctor-to-patient ratio in the state. According to the bill’s sponsor, the current gap between doctors and patients is 12%, and 60% of doctors trained […]

Side note: On Tuesday, the Massachusetts Medical Society released its annual MMS Physician Practice Environment Index,a report on 9 factors in the state that influence the practice environment for physicians. For 16 of the past 18 years, the analysis has shown a decline in this environment – and 2009 was no exception. Of the four […]

side note: On the surface, this looks like a harsh ruling, but it does affirm the bulletproof nature of Texas’ tort reforms. Many states would like to see their tort reforms stand up to this kind of scrutiny. Patients in Texas must file malpractice claims within 10 years of when an alleged negligence occurred and […]

We here at Cunningham Group were extremely disappointed that trial lawyers got their way in Illinois and were able to strike down the 2005 Tort Reform legislation put into place to help with the absurd insurance rates physicians have to pay for their professional medical liability. A new study conducted by the consulting firm Millman […]