Will a Doctor’s Financial Life Be Over After a Verdict?
We really have seen an insurance company pull this trick!! The tried to get the jury to believe that the doctor (and his wife, who they had sit in the courtroom during the trial) were going to be bankrupt if the jury returned a verdict in favor of the patient.
Rest assured that 99.9% of all health care providers (and automobile drivers) are covered in some way by insurance. The lawyers defending in medical malpractice and personal injury cases are paid by the hour by insurance companies and the jury’s verdicts are covered by insurance companies. A single adverse verdict will not hurt a doctor’s career. What you may not know (because the law does not allow you to know) is that the doctor may be a repeat offender. Thus jury verdicts serve a very important purpose in helping the Board of Medicine identify and weed out bad doctors. It is a sad fiction of our law that we do not let juries know the whole truth during trials.