An interesting case was recently argued in the Supreme Court that concerns various aspects of our practice. The case is entitled Levin v. United States, and it is an appeal from the Ninth Circuit case 663 F.3d 1059 (2011). Of concern to our practice is how the courts will interpret certain aspects of the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), specifically with regard to suits against medical personnel employed by the U.S. government.

In the early 2000s, it came to the attention of the medical community that many hospitals were causing harm to patients while providing treatment. The number was somewhere around 25% of all hospital patients were actually hurt in some way by being treated for whatever ailment brought them to the hospital in the first place (1 in 4). Landrigan’s study set out to analyze a random set of hospitals in North Carolina, which was a state that had committed some of the most funds toward decreasing the number of harms caused by medical personnel. The results of this study show that even after a focused attempt to decrease the number from 25%, the number in fact remained the same, or merely decreased in a way that was statistically insignificant.

People are often perplexed at the verdict amounts in civil tort cases. Even sometimes to an experienced attorney, damages calculations, while rooted in clear guidelines, can have a counter-intuitive result. One such theory of damages that we want to try to explain in everyday terms is “loss of a chance,” and why sometimes damages may result to a person from what seems to be nothing at all. We will explain.