The VLW Blog

That description of a recent Norfolk Circuit Court case on the court’s Web site sounds like those English class assignments on collective nouns: a pack of hounds, a congress of baboons, a charm of hummingbirds. In fact, Judge Everett Martin Jr.’s Nov. 14 opinion confronted a collection of experts the parties wanted to bring to [...]

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The Supreme Court of Virginia issued decisions in two medical malpractice cases today. One, as expected, was a published order ruling that Eastern Virginia Medical School Academic Physicians and Surgeons Health Services Foundation does not have charitable immunity.Judges in Norfolk had ruled in three separate cases that the foundation has such immunity before the Supreme [...]

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At last, medical malpractice defense attorneys must be saying, a decision from the Supreme Court of Virginia in our favor – albeit in the form of an unpublished order. To say that the case of Lindamood v. Jamshidi had languished in Fairfax County Circuit Court would be an understatement. The widow of Thomas C. Lindamood [...]

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Medical malpractice plaintiffs continued their string of wins in the Supreme Court of Virginia in an unpublished order issued today. The case, Kraina v. Carman, stemmed from the removal of ruptured breast implants by Norfolk physicians in November 2001. In her original complaint, the plaintiff specified injuries that she alleged were caused by the failure [...]

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Failures to communicate were the keys to two medical malpractice cases decided today in favor oF plaintiffs by the Supreme Court of Virginia. In one, Williams v. Le, a diagnostic radiologist never reported directly to the treating physician or his staff that a Doppler sonogram showed that a patient had a deep vein thrombosis in [...]

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A Clifton Forge woman who claimed that her bunionectomy led to permanent, disabling pain and the amputation of her toes won a $3.5 million verdict from a Roanoke jury on Friday. With the cap on medical malpractice damages, the award would be reduced to $1.65 million. Attorney Patrick T. Fennell represented the plaintiff in the [...]

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The University of Virginia Health Services Foundation does not have charitable immunity, the Supreme Court of Virginia ruled unanimously today. “HSF operates like a profitable commercial business with extensive revenue and assets. That portion of HSF’s services providing quality medical care to medically indigent patients is commendable,” Justice Donald W. Lemons wrote for the court [...]

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No expert testimony is needed to establish that a dialysis center was negligent in placing a patient in a chair that collapsed—twice, the Supreme Court of Virginia ruled today. “The issue of the defendant’s acts of medical negligence regarding the defective chair is quite simple and within the common knowledge of a lay jury,” the [...]

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Chief Justice Leroy Rountree Hassell Sr. noted that the University of Virginia Health Services Foundation pays annual bonuses ranging from $70,000 to more than $850,000 to physicians who work at U.Va. Hospital. “To me, it raises a big eyebrow,” Hassell told Charlottesville lawyer Donald R. Morin, who was trying to convince the Supreme Court of [...]

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