Hovermale Law

Medical malpractice cases in Maine are extraordinarily difficult for many reasons:

• The enormous cost involved in working the case up, proceeding through the prelitigation panel system, and then on towards trial put a tremendous amount of time, effort and money strain on a busy practitioner. The out of pocket costs to try a case to a panel can be as much as $35,000-$40,000. Through trial can top $100,000.
• The medicine has to be learned even when simply investigating the case. This obviously takes time and effort that a busy practitioner many times doesn’t have.
• The adjusters for the major carriers are top-notch. The defense lawyers are top-notch. All these factors have turned medical malpractice into a true subspecialty over the last 10-15 years.

The material in this newsletter is designed to help you recognize the potentially viable medical malpractice case and point out some of the pitfalls of the system. A word of caution however: each case is different—on its facts, the medicine, the personalities, and the law. While this newsletter may give you a rough guide in certain areas, you may want to pick up the phone and call to discuss the case in more detail.

Maine Medical Malpractice News is a quarterly newsletter published to help members of the Maine bar identify viable medical malpractice cases in the context of the expensive, time-consuming and complicated medical malpractice system in Maine.

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