If you are reading this book, something happened in a hospital or a doctor's office, and your life, or your child's, was turned upside down. Maybe it was last week. Maybe it was years ago and you are only now ready to ask what went wrong. You are carrying questions, and in thirty-five years of practice in Baltimore I have heard a lot of them. Was it a mistake, or did something simply go badly? Is there a case? How long do I have? Who is responsible, and who pays?
I can't turn back the hands of time, and I wish that I could. What I can offer is a calm hand and the truth about how a Maryland claim works. A lawsuit is like going into a foreign country. You do not speak the language, and you do not know where to go. This book is meant to be your guide, so that you have a map before you ever sit down with a lawyer.
The spine is simple. A bad outcome is not always malpractice. A claim rests on the standard of care, which is what we call the measure of what a doctor should have done, and on a second doctor willing to say it was not met. It rests on the medical record, which is the Bible of a case. It generally needs a certificate of qualified expert, and it has to be filed on time. Then come the questions of who is named, what insurance sits behind each name, what a family can recover and what Maryland limits. Last, who decides whether a case settles. The answer to that one is the client, and I say so plainly.
Birth injury runs through the book because those are the toughest cases for me to handle. A moment of joy becomes a disaster, and I never lose sight of that. I also write about surgery, anesthesia and missed diagnoses, because those are calls I hear too.
Here is what this book is not. It is not legal advice, and it is not a promise about any case. Every case turns on its own records, and a lawyer has to read them before anyone can say what a case is. Let's manage your expectations from the first page: a very small share of the callers I hear from become cases, and I will explain why. Every legal term is defined the moment it appears.
You do not have to read in order. Start with the chapter closest to the question that brought you here, and come back to the rest when you are ready.