Paulson & Nace attorney Christopher T. Nace recently lectured on how to handle medical malpractice cases involving failure to diagnose in the emergency room at the American Association for Justice mid-winter convention in Miami.  Mr. Nace addressed a room full of leading plaintiffs’ lawyers about how to best prepare medical malpractice or medical negligence cases where the negligence occurs in the emergency department.

Mr. Nace is currently handling several emergency room cases, which are unique in that the timing of care is often critical to a patient’s outcome. 

In addition to speaking on emergency room cases, Mr. Nace also participated in a panel discussion entitled “How to Win the Hearts and Minds of New Lawyers.”  Mr. Nace was invited to address the National Association of Trial Lawyer Executives on the second day of the AAJ convention.

Mr. Nace serves on several AAJ and Public Justice committees and is currently the Treasurer of the AAJ New Lawyers Division.

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Paulson & Nace senior partner Barry J. Nace was recently quoted in an article about medical malpractice reform.  The article by Jessica Harper was published by the Capital News Service and has been picked up by several outlets.  The article was written on the heels of President Obama’s State of the Union address in which he suggested that he might be amenable to medical malpractice reform.

Mr. Nace was asked about so-called frivolous lawsuits:

“What is a frivolous lawsuit? The guy I voted for used that term in his speech, but I don’t know what that means,” Nace said. “Just because patients don’t have a lot of injuries, does that mean they were not malpracticed upon?”

Nace said malpractice can mean denial of care, and cited the example of a client from La Plata, Md., who was denied a CAT scan because of her weight. Doctors refused her care, Nace said, because they feared she would break their machine.

“So, they shipped her out to another hospital. When she arrived, it took doctors another 13 hours to perform a CT because she got there in the middle of the night,” he said. “It was just a total, horrendous show,” said Nace. “We were told this was a frivolous lawsuit.”

Nace, who has worked as a personal injury lawyer in the greater Washington, D.C., area for 40 years, also disapproves of limits or caps on punitive damages and challenged GOP leaders who favor such practices.

Mr. Nace suggested that those advocating limits on malpractice awards should put themselves in a victim’s shoes:

“Here’s what you should say to all these Republican senators and House members who want to cap awards: Senator (Mitch) McConnell (R-Ky.), if your wife were to lose both of her legs as a result of malpractice, do you think that would be worth only $250,000 to her?” said Nace.

As a past-president of the Association of Trial Lawyers of American (now the American Association for Justice) and one of the most experienced medical malpractice lawyers in the nation, Barry J. Nace is an authority on issues related to the medical liability system.  He has tried over 100 medical malpractice trials to jury verdict and has recovered millions of dollars for his clients who have been harmed as a result of medical negligence.