Lawsuits…

Anonymous
June 29, 2007 at 12:43 am

I did not mean to discourage you, but in the almost 5 years I have been reading this forum I have heard no one mention trying a lawsuit (other than the vaccination one.) As you probably already know, the doctors win like 80%of all medical malpractice suits that are filed. People see one large lawsuit win in the newspaper, & think that it is so easy. We did file a lawsuit back in the early 80s after I had given birth to a child in 1981 with a severe case of spina bifida. I had had a tubal ligation exactly a year previous to that, even though the doctor had already known then that the machines they were using were incompatible for a complete burn.

It was really a slam-dunk case for our attorney, as there had been a class action suit filed against this doctor even before my surgery. Even though the problem was known beforehand, this clinic still kept using the machine, even though our other clinic was referring everyone to Duluth, MN. Anyways, what should have been a simple lawsuit lasted 9 years, with many depositions, many trips down to the Twin Cities, etc. It was 9 years of hell for us, & we ended up finally settling out of court the first day of the trial. After the attorney took his 40% plus his 9 years of expenses, it was so not worth it.

I would never file another lawsuit under any circumstances. My only consolation is that we did put every penny away into investments back in 1990 & it has grown considerably, so that if my son can’t work some day, he will have a nice nest egg. But the stress it all took on having to keep all of this secret from our 3 children back then & even now, has been very hard on us. That is why I do not encourage people to try to sue doctors.