{"id":2157,"date":"2004-07-26T18:04:46","date_gmt":"2004-07-27T01:04:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mossback.org\/archives\/2004\/07\/abcnewscom\/"},"modified":"2004-07-26T18:04:46","modified_gmt":"2004-07-27T01:04:46","slug":"abcnewscom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/2004\/07\/26\/abcnewscom\/","title":{"rendered":"Edwards’ malpractice suits"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tA recent John Stossel report in ABC’s 20\/20 points out that 76% of Las Vegas <\/a> obstetricians have been sued<\/a> by lawyers like John Edwards, who famously won huge awards<\/a> in dubious cases:<\/p>\n

\n

Cerebral palsy is a central nervous system defect that makes it hard for people to control their muscles. At the time of Edwards’ cases, the defect was often said to be caused by a lack of oxygen to the baby’s brain during delivery. Edwards and other lawyers have argued that if the doctor involved had only done a Caesarean section, the child’s cerebral palsy could have been prevented. <\/p>\n

He won a record verdict in a cerebral palsy case after he told the jury he was speaking for the injured infant, in the womb. He was very convincing and the jury awarded his clients over $6 million. Scruggs told me, “Wouldn’t you want your lawyer to be just as clever and just as effective?” <\/p>\n

One thing doctors may have learned from these kinds of cases was to do more C-sections. The procedure is more common today for many reasons, including scheduling convenience, but doctors say fear of a cerebral palsy lawsuit has had a big impact. <\/p>\n

Since 1970 C-sections have gone from 6 percent of all births to 26 percent. “And there has not been one small decrease in the cerebral palsy rate across the board,” said Mandeville. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

See ABC’s message boards<\/a> for some discussion of the unusual disclaimer.<\/p>\n

H\/T Mr. Reynolds.<\/a>\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A recent John Stossel report in ABC’s 20\/20 points out that 76% of Las Vegas obstetricians have been sued by lawyers like John Edwards, who famously won huge awards in dubious cases: Cerebral palsy is a central nervous system defect that makes it hard for people to control their muscles. At the time of Edwards’ … Continue reading “Edwards’ malpractice suits”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbifyw-yN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2157\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}