Juries Tend to Favor Physicians in Liability Litigation

Juries seem to have more sympathy for doctors than they do for patients who allege medical malpractice and likely will rule in the physician's favor in any given case, particularly when the evidence is weak. So says a study by Philip Peters Jr., J.D., a professor at the University of Missouri - Columbia School of Law.

The study, "Doctors and Juries," presents an analysis of medical liability lawsuits from 1989 to 2006. Peters, who is Ruth L. Hulston Professor of Law at the school, reports that juries can identify weak allegations against physicians and that 80 percent to 90 percent of the time, jurors come to the same decisions that independent legal experts would have made. Expert witnesses are important, but juries find more merit in testimony by the physician's expert when the evidence conflicts with that presented by the plaintiff's expert, said Peters.

"From the perspective of malpractice defendants, at least, jury performance is remarkably good," wrote Peters in the abstract for the study. Patients lose about half the cases they would have been expected to win, the data indicate.

The study's findings go against assumptions made by lawmakers who introduce bills that would remove juries from medical liability litigation, according to Peters. Thus, such legislation could work against physicians' best interests.

"When the jury is in doubt after hearing the conflicting experts, the benefit of that doubt usually goes to the defendant," he said in a university news release. "This is the opposite of the assumption made by critics of jury decision-making."

Peters' article is scheduled to be published in the May edition of the Michigan Law Review.