1. What Do I Do If I Get Sued? (Part X)
2. Risk Rewards Wants to Hear from You!
3. Trial Lawyers Suing Trial Lawyers

What Do I Do If I Get Sued? (Part X)

Congratulations! The jury returned a Not Guilty verdictyou won! The journey was long but the legal system supported you and found that you did nothing wrong. Can you relax and forget that the whole thing ever happened? Not necessarily. The party that loses usually has the right to appeal. If the plaintiff exercises this right, the litigation process is not over.

In Illinois, the losing party has 30 days to file a post-trial motion before the trial Judge. Post-trial motions are a series of legal requests geared toward obtaining a new trial or - if the plaintiff had won - a change in the amount of the damage award. After post trial motions are heard and ruled upon, either party may appeal the verdict to the appropriate appellate court. It is the appellate court’s function to review the legal rulings made during the trial, not the medicine, to determine if a legal error was made. Every case does not get appealed; however, if an appeal is filled in your case, your ISMIE defense team will continue to provide you with the best defense.

For more information on appeals, refer to The Physician Defendant Handbook that was provided as part of your Claims Survival Kit. Please ask your claims analyst for another copy if you need one. Even if you’ve never been sued, we’ll be happy to provide you with a copy of this material. You can report a claim or lawsuit by contacting the Claims Division at 1-800-782-4767 or visit www.ismie.com. We hope that this series on ‘What Do I Do If I Get Sued” has been helpful. If you missed any part of the series you can access past issues of ISMIEnews
at: http://www.ismie.com/publications/enews_archive.html.

Risk Rewards Wants to Hear from You!

The Managing Risk-Risk Rewards program has just begun its fifth year of operation. We are happy to report over 6,000 policyholders have taken advantage of this important tool to assist in managing medical liability risk.

We would like to make sure that the program meets the needs of all of our policyholders, so ISMIE will be conducting an opinion survey about the Risk Rewards program. We are interested in every policyholder’s input and ask that you participate in the survey, whether or not you have been an active participant in Risk Rewards.

In the next few days you will receive a letter from ISMIE Mutual advising you about an on-line survey that will help us find out firsthand what you think about the Risk Rewards program. This is a confidential survey so please give us your honest opinion! When the results are tallied, a summary report will be made available.

Trial Lawyers Suing Trial Lawyers

...They’re At It Again

Who wins when one group of trial lawyers files suit against another group of trial lawyers? This question, while it sounds foolish, is very real and is actually being posed by two trial lawyer organizations. The American Association for Justice (AAJ) has filed a lawsuit against an organization of lawyers in Minnesota calling themselves The American Trial Lawyers Association (The ATLA). It appears that AAJ (formerly the Association of Trial Lawyers of America or ATLA) is taking objection to the new group’s name and has sued them for trademark infringement.

The AAJ for many years was called the Association of Trial Lawyers of America and was one of the largest and most politically powerful trial lawyer organizations in the U.S. representing the political interests of its roughly 56,000 members. In an effort to change their reputation, the Association of Trial Lawyers of America changed their name to the American Association for Justice. After all, it is easier to attack an association of trial lawyers than to attack an association of trial lawyers fighting for “justice.” So essentially, AAJ is suing The ATLA for using a name that is too close to their old name.

Now if you could keep up with that confusion (the masterful art of trial lawyers), it only gets better. The American College of Trial Lawyers has also filed suit against The ATLA, claiming that the name is too close to its own. Although this may not become a high profile case, it is certainly amusing.

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