Why are medical malpractice lawyers so interested in the money?

Physicians who are willing to be expert witnesses are often difficult to find and when found require large sums, usually thousands of dollars, to review the records and testify against another doctor.

Lawyers understand that many times their law firm will spend hundreds of dollars for all the appropriate medical records then perhaps thousands of dollars to a physician to review the records, only to be told the injury or death was unfortunate but not the result of malpractice.

Most physicians' insurance companies refuse to make any offers of settlement until expensive and time consuming depositions have been taken. In medical malpractice cases the experts are almost always physicians. It is not easy to find a local doctor that is willing to testify against other local doctors so most often experts live out of state.

As an example, the cost of flying to California or New York when the case originates in Florida to get depositions can cost several thousand dollars per expert. In some cases there are as many as ten experts in all.

It is apparent that it would be easy to spend many thousands of dollars, and in some cases, even hundreds of thousands of dollars, pursuing a medical negligence claim.

For these reasons, lawyers are not in a position to consider taking a case unless the injuries and damages are extremely significant.