Author ORCID Identifier
https://orcid.org/0009-0001-2692-141X
Document Type
Article
Publication Title
Journal of Health & Biomedical Law
Abstract
Imagine two patients, Mal and Gary, are admitted to neighboring rooms in a Boston teaching hospital. While hospitalized, they both suffer serious injuries, but the mechanisms are different: Mal’s are caused by a drug interaction that her medical team knew, or should have known, would cause her injury when they delivered it to her. Gary’s injuries, by contrast, were caused by a contract maintenance worker who dropped a fixture on him while attempting to make a repair in the patient’s room.
Both patients have a right to bring claims for the negligence that injured them. Only Mal’s, however, will be framed as a medical malpractice case, while Gary’s will be framed as a garden-variety negligence claim. This essay will examine some of the ways the litigation and trial of their respective cases will differ and how it will impact their cases’ outcomes.
First Page
443
Last Page
470
Publication Date
2013
Recommended Citation
Gabriel H. Teninbaum & Benjamin R. Zimmermann, A Tale of Two Lawsuits, 8 J. of Health & Biomedical L. 443 (2013).
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License