In determining whether a medical practitioner made a mistake, the court will consider what reasonable, prudent medical practitioners would have done in the same situation. If the medical practitioners did not meet that standard, they could be found negligent.

• In NY, the legal standard applied to malpractice claims is whether the doctor departed from the accepted standard of medical care in either “doing something that a reasonably prudent doctor would not do under the circumstances, or failing to do something that a reasonably prudent doctor would do under the circumstances. It is a deviation or departure from accepted practice.” (NY Pattern Jury Instructions 2:150).
• Dr’s are not liable just because the patient ended up with a bad result, unless it can be proven that the bad result was caused by the Dr’s negligence.
• Dr’s are also not liable for exercising medical judgment by choosing from accepted treatment alternatives. In other words, if there are three accepted ways of treating a particular condition and the Dr chooses treatment method #1 rather than #2 or 3, he or she is not negligent even if in hindsight it could be said that option #2 or 3 may have been a more effective treatment. Where a Dr may be negligent is when he or she chose an unaccepted method of treatment or failed to perform appropriate diagnostic tests to make the decision as to the best method of treatment.
• Please appreciate that the burden of proving that the Dr. departed from the accepting standard of care is upon you as the party bringing the lawsuit. In other words, if a jury was to find that the Dr’s version of the case was as equally persuasive as your version of the case, then you would lose because you did not sustain the burden of proving that your version was more likely correct.
• Please understand that the costs of pursuing a malpractice case are HUGE! It is not unusual that costs exceed $20,000 to $30,000 (We had one case where we advanced costs of $85,000) so we can only accept those cases where there is a good likliehood of success AND where we believe the jury would return a very substantial verdict. As we are sure you can appreciate, it doesn’t make sense to bring a case where the costs are $30,000 and the jury returns a verdict for $20,000. Accordingly, we only take medical malpractice cases where our clients have suffered very significant, permanent injuries.
• And finally, please understand that in NY, the statewide statistic is that patients bringing medical malpractice claims lose 70% of the cases. Fortunately, our own success rate is MUCH better than that which we attribute to being very analytical about the cases we will accept or reject.