Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2007
Abstract
Legislation is pending in both houses of Congress to transfer medical malpractice cases from civil juries to administrative health courts. The Institute of Medicine also wants to take malpractice cases away from juries through a system of binding early settlement offers. Each of these proposals is premised on the assumption that juries lack the capacity to resolve medical malpractice disputes fairly. This article evaluates that premise. It collects and synthesizes three decades of empirical research on jury decision-making, updating the seminal review done by Neil Vidmar over a decade ago.Four important findings emerge from the data. First, negligence matters. Plaintiffs rarely win weak cases. They have more success in toss-up cases, and fare best in cases with strong evidence of medical negligence. Second, jury verdicts are most likely to square with the opinions of experts hired to evaluate the jury's performance when the evidence of provider negligence is weak. This is the very set of cases that most worries critics of malpractice litigation. Juries agree with expert reviewers in 80 to 90 percent of these cases - a better agreement rate than physicians typically have with each other. Third, jury verdicts are much more likely to deviate from the opinion of an expert reviewer when there is strong evidence of negligence. Doctors consistently win about 50 percent of the cases which experts believe the plaintiffs should win. Fourth, the poor success of malpractice plaintiffs in these cases strongly suggests the presence of factors that systematically favor medical defendants in the courtroom. The most promising explanations for that advantage are the defendant's superior resources, the social standing of physicians, social norms against "profiting" from an injury, and the jury's willingness to give physicians the "benefit of the doubt" when the evidence of negligence is conflicting. From the perspective of malpractice defendants at least, jury performance is remarkably good.
Recommended Citation
Philip G. Peters Jr., Doctors & Juries, 105 Mich. L. Rev. 1453 (2007)