Medical Malpractice Case Settles

I am pleased to report the medical malpractice case I mediated on Friday, March 18, 2005 settled. The defendants asked for confidentiality, and typically I would not agree. In this case, however, there were valid reasons so I won't go into details regarding the settlement.

I will comment however, on negotiation tactics that I saw at the mediation and have begun to see with increasing frequency. The defense lawyers/insurance companies are not responding to the demands that I make[and they request]. Instead, they indicate the demand is "too high" and they won't make an offer until I reduce it to a range they find acceptable. The objective obviously is to get the numbers down before they even get into the game. In my experience thus far, they use this tactic only in cases where there is no chance of a runaway verdict. I doubt this is happening in Illinois alone, and probably is a tactic being used nationwide.