When a process server delivers legal notice that one of your patients is suing you for unspecified damages in a malpractice or negligence suit, that isn’t the time to start searching for a good lawyer. You need to act quickly and with assurance that you will have the very best legal representation working on your behalf from day one. That’s why you need to keep the law firm of Fann and Petruccelli up front and easily accessible in your contact lists.
With offices in Fort Lauderdale, Naples, Tampa and Pensacola, Fla., and now an office in Phoenix, Ariz., Fann and Petruccelli specializes in medical malpractice, nursing home litigation, insurance defense, and health law, including peer review, fraud and abuse, and compliance. Fann and Petruccelli is long on experience and litigation skills, earning the firm an AV rating (the very highest) for both competency and integrity as assigned by the publishers of the Martindale-Hubbel Law Directory.
Partner Michael Petruccelli notes that the firm’s mission is to “render quality representation for our clients. We are not afraid to try cases.” In testament to the firm’s strengths, Michael Petruccelli himself was selected for inclusion in Florida Super Lawyers 2008 in the area of Medical Malpractice Defense, an honor bestowed on only five percent of attorneys in the state. Petruccelli’s approach to defense is straightforward. “The critical measurement in medical malpractice defense is what is reasonable and prudent care. Under the circumstances, what should the physician or health care provider have done?”At Fann and Petruccelli, the fact-finding process before any trial is a team effort, with the firm’s staff of legal nurse consultants playing an important role in discovery. Nurse consultants are registered nurses (some also have JD degrees) who complement attorney expertise with real-life knowledge of how the health care system works at the frontline: in health care facilities, at insurance companies, and at the government level. It’s a relatively new but cost-effective field. “These are the folks we send into a hospital or doctor’s office to research and decipher records pertaining to a particular case,” said Petruccelli. “They understand health care risk management and claims administration. They know how to analyze records.”
While some 30 states including Florida have enacted malpractice payout caps and payouts have, indeed, declined significantly, the National Practitioner Data Bank reports that Florida was one of six states accounting for more than 50 percent of total payouts in 2011. Fann and Petruccelli attorneys work hard to obtain defense verdicts on behalf of their clients and reverse those statistics. Of recent note:
– Obtaining a verdict in favor of a Sarasota County hospital in a $1.5 million suit claiming negligence on the part of the hospital in failing to provide a bedside sitter for an elderly patient who fell and that the fall contributed to a brain hemorrhage.
– Obtaining a total defense verdict in favor of a Lee County hospital in a $2.5 million suit claiming damages resulting from a physician’s misdiagnosis of a perforated ulcer. It was alleged that the hospital held the doctor out to be an apparent agent.
– Obtaining a total defense verdict on behalf of a urologist who was sued (the plaintiffs sought $4.4 million in damages) in connection with the death of woman with a long history of kidney problems at a Florida Keys hospital even though he was out of town and not on call, but took a simple cell phone call from the attending emergency doctor and was not subsequently advised of the patient’s turn for the worse before he returned home.
– Obtaining a defense verdict on behalf of a Broward County ophthalmologist in a $3.3 million suit claiming damages in the treatment of a corneal ulcer. The defense was able to show that care rendered by its client was appropriate.
