Medical negligence and malpractice is something that no family should ever have to endure, but families in the Great Lakes area may be in better stead than others. Most recently, an Oak Park family won $50m in medical malpractice fees following a landmark case concerning an emergency c-section. This indicates a shift in the northern part of the USA towards a patient-positive trend of litigation, and there’s good reasons behind it.
Client-positive legislation
A storied history of patient-positive legal frameworks lays the ground for why the Great Lakes is generally a good place for medical justice. LCA Ships outline the ground-breaking Jones Act as a huge reason behind this. While primarily an economic bill, it also gave employees the right to sue employers and medical institutions on medical grounds. Legal industry experts JJS Justice note that having avenues of redress in the first place is important, and this includes patients knowing that they simply have the possibility of recourse to justice.
Industry hotbed
As a region associated with huge manufacturing and other industrial works, the Great Lakes has also played host to a wide range of workplace medical conditions that have then been subject to medical malpractice. This has most recently been seen in a glut of asbestos cases, improperly dealt with, across manufacturing states like Michigan. With that has come a lot of experience and a need for legal professionals in the region. While it’s not good that workers endured these experiences, it has meant that legal professionals have had a chance to hone their abilities.
An active media
The Great Lakes is lauded for its active and investigative media, and this has come into play time and time again with medical cases. Often controversial given the expertise involved, they are hard pieces to write about and attract adverse attention. Most recently, Task and Purpose raised the case of a Navy corpsman whose family are believed to have died of medical malpractice. As a result of this journalism, and the family’s activism, the matter is up for review with congress – a clear nod in progress towards patient rights.
Taken together, this has helped the Great Lakes region to be one of the best when it comes to medical rights. Legal redress is always available and of the highest quality. At a time when healthcare coverage continues to shrink and is strained under the weight of national illness, these protections have never been more important.
Doris’s passion for writing started to take shape in college where she was editor-in-chief of the college newspaper. Even though she ended up working in IT for more than 7 years, she’s now back to what he always enjoyed doing. With a true passion for technology, Doris mostly covers tech-related topics.