Patrick A. Malone (born 1951) is a trial lawyer and author based in Washington, D.C. Malone co-developed a trial advocacy method called "Rules of the Road". [1]
Malone co-authored Rules of the Road: A Plaintiff Lawyer's Guide to Proving Liability, with Rick Friedman, which was published by Trial Guides in 2006. [1] Since then, the techniques described in the book have been the subject of national and regional seminars for trial lawyers, sponsored by the American Association for Justice (AAJ) -- formerly known as the Association of Trial Lawyers of America (ATLA) -- the largest organization for plaintiffs' attorneys in the United States. [2] [3] An expanded second edition of the book was published in 2010. [1] The publisher describes the book as "America's bestselling text on proving liability." [1] The phrase "Rules of the Road" has been trademarked. [4]
In their book, Friedman and Malone posit that civil defendants defeat meritorious lawsuits by three main techniques -- "complexity, confusion and ambiguity" - and that plaintiff advocates can prepare more persuasive cases by developing case-specific "rules" that clarify the core liability issues in the case. [5]
In 2012, Malone was the lead author of a follow-up book, Winning Medical Malpractice Cases With the Rules of the Road Technique. [6] In the same year, the AAJ added a special annual two-day seminar on "rules of the road" as applied to medical malpractice cases. [7]
In 2016, Malone's book The Fearless Cross-Examiner: Win the Witness, Win the Case was published. This book aimed to overturn standard advice on how trial lawyers should conduct cross-examination and instead advocated a more analytic and adaptable approach. [8]
In Benedi v. McNeil-P.P.C., Inc. (E.D. Va.), a federal jury in Alexandria, Virginia, found in 1994 that the manufacturer of Tylenol should pay Malone's client $8 million for failing to warn on its label about the drug's ability to destroy the liver in ordinary doses in alcohol drinkers. The verdict was affirmed by the Fourth Circuit [9] The Boston Globe called it one of the top ten lawsuit verdicts against pharmaceutical companies. [10]
In Semsker v. Lockshin, a state court jury in Rockville, Maryland, awarded the family of a deceased attorney $5.8 million against a dermatology practice that had failed to timely diagnose the attorney's melanoma. The trial court agreed with Malone's argument that the state's limitation on malpractice damages should not apply to this case. However, the state's highest court, the Maryland Court of Appeals, reversed and ordered the verdict reduced to account for the statutory cap after hearing from amici curiae , including the state medical society and the American Medical Association. [11]
Malone represented the plaintiff in Goldberg v. Boone, a Maryland medical malpractice in which the plaintiff suffered brain injury during a procedure to remove a cholesteatoma from the ear. Reversing the intermediate appellate court, the Maryland court of appeals agreed with Malone's position and established the right of Maryland patients to sue a surgeon for lack of informed consent in not advising that other more experienced surgeons were available for a particular procedure. [12]
Before attending law school, Malone was a medical writer and investigative reporter for the Miami Herald . He was a finalist for a 1980 Pulitzer Prize for "Dangerous Doctors", a series of articles he co-authored. He earned a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1984. [13]
Malone was a law clerk to Judge Gerhard Gesell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia from 1984 to 1985. [14] Malone worked for 22 years for the law firm of Stein, Mitchell & Mezines (now Stein, Mitchell, Muse & Cipollone, LLP). [15]
Malone also wrote The Life You Save: Nine Steps to Finding the Best Medical Care—and Avoiding the Worst, which helps patients and their friends and family insure that they receive the best medical care in today's healthcare system. [16] [17] [18]
Negligence is a failure to exercise appropriate and or ethical ruled care expected to be exercised amongst specified circumstances. The area of tort law known as negligence involves harm caused by failing to act as a form of carelessness possibly with extenuating circumstances. The core concept of negligence is that people should exercise reasonable care in their actions, by taking account of the potential harm that they might foreseeably cause to other people or property.
Medical malpractice is professional negligence by act or omission by a health care provider in which the treatment provided falls below the accepted standard of practice in the medical community and causes injury or death to the patient, with most cases involving medical error. Claims of medical malpractice, when pursued in US courts, are processed as civil torts. Sometimes an act of medical malpractice will also constitute a criminal act, as in the case of the death of Michael Jackson.
In United States federal law, the Daubert standard is a rule of evidence regarding the admissibility of expert witness testimony. A party may raise a Daubert motion, a special motion in limine raised before or during trial, to exclude the presentation of unqualified evidence to the jury. The Daubert trilogy are the three United States Supreme Court cases that articulated the Daubert standard:
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Robert A. Clifford is a Chicago trial lawyer and principal partner at Clifford Law Offices. Clifford's firm specializes in "personal injury, medical malpractice, mass torts, consumer and health care fraud, product liability, and aviation and transportation disasters." He attended DePaul University for both his undergraduate work and Juris Doctorate, finishing in 1976. The firm was founded in 1984 to represent plaintiffs in personal injury and wrongful death cases.
A personal injury lawyer is a lawyer who provides legal services to those who claim to have been injured, physically or psychologically, as a result of the negligence of another person, company, government agency or any entity. Personal injury lawyers primarily practice in the area of law known as tort law. Examples of common personal injury claims include injuries from slip and fall accidents, traffic collisions, defective products, workplace injuries and professional malpractice.
The Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act (MICRA) of 1975 was a statute enacted by the California Legislature in September 1975, which was intended to lower medical malpractice liability insurance premiums for healthcare providers in that state by decreasing their potential tort liability.
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Tort reform refers to proposed changes in the civil justice system that aim to reduce the ability of victims to bring tort litigation or to reduce damages they can receive.
T. John Ward is a retired United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. He is best known for the large number of patent infringement cases brought before his court in Marshall, Texas.
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Venable LLP is a law firm formerly known as Venable, Baetjer & Howard LLP. The firm is ranked 64th in the 2017 AmLaw 100 survey. It was founded in Baltimore in 1900. Today the firm maintains 8 offices throughout the country and includes more than 800 attorneys practicing in over 70 practice and industry areas covering corporate and business law, complex litigation, intellectual property and regulatory and government affairs.
Allen, Allen, Allen & Allen is a United States law firm based in Richmond, Virginia. Founded in 1910 in Lunenburg County, Virginia the firm now has 32 attorneys and more than 130 staff employees in 8 offices in Virginia. They have offices in Richmond, Chesterfield, Mechanicsville, Petersburg, Stafford, Fredericksburg, Charlottesville and Short Pump.
The American Tort Reform Association (ATRA) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to reforming the civil justice system and advocating for tort reform. It is a nationwide network of state-based liability reform coalitions with 142,000 grassroots supporters. It was founded in 1986 by the American Council of Engineering Companies and was joined shortly thereafter by the American Medical Association.
Devan v. Ernst and Young is a 1998 lawsuit filed in Baltimore City Circuit Court against Ernst and Young that resulted in the largest single defendant settlement in Maryland history.
Weitz & Luxenberg P.C. is a large personal injury and medical malpractice law firm headquartered in New York, specializing in asbestos litigation. The firm also specializes in medical malpractice, consumer protection and environmental protection litigation. Erin Brockovich, the woman made famous by Julia Robert's portrayal of her in the movie Erin Brockovich, works with the firm on environmental cases as of 2008.
Ervin A. Gonzalez was an American civil trial attorney whose practice focused on wrongful death, personal injury, medical negligence, product liability and class action torts. He was born in Miami, Florida. He was a shareholder with the law firm Colson Hicks Eidson in the firm's Coral Gables office, and he has been featured in reports about his cases in USA Today, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, The American Lawyer, Associated Press, CBS News, National Public Radio (NPR), ProPublica, The Miami Herald, Daily Business Review, The Palm Beach Post, WTVJ-NBC6 South Florida, CBSMiami, WPLG-TV ABC Channel 10, and many others.
Professor Jon Bauer is a co-author with Patrick Malone of "Unethical Secret Settlements: Just Say No" in the September 2010 issue of Trial, the monthly magazine of the American Association for Justice.