The New York Times, December 26, 1996:

When a plaintiff wins a malpractice lawsuit, the size of the award has less to do with whether a doctor has done something wrong than with whether the patient is permanently disabled, according to a new study in the New England Journal of Medicine ...

The study, by Dr. Troyen A. Brennan and his colleagues at the Harvard School of Public Health, evaluated 46 New York State malpractice suits resolved after 10 years and found that the actions of the doctor did little to influence the outcome.

In 13 of the cases, where records showed that the doctor was not responsible for the injury that led to the lawsuit, the patients won 6 of the cases and were awarded an average settlement of $98,192.

In contrast, there were nine cases where the records showed the doctor was negligent. In five of those cases, the settlements averaged $66,944—nearly one-third less than when the doctor was not to blame.

The remaining 24 cases involved injuries that were caused by the underlying disease, not by the medical treatment the patient received. Nonetheless, the patients won 10 of those 24 cases and received a typical award of $28,760, often from an insurance company trying to avoid a costly trial.

†