HEALTHY DEFENSE

Law firm designed to work against medical malpractice trend

James Saxton remembers his days as a defense attorney for Stevens & Lee PC's Lancaster office, when he looked across the courtroom and saw familiar lawyer faces on the plaintiff's side.

He should. It was onlyabout a decade ago.

But an unintended consequence of the state's medical malpractice reforms, he said, has left the Central Pennsylvania market open to well-funded lawyers from some of the biggest Arms in Philadelphia.

The change in the market led Saxton and his partner, Christopher Stump, to depart Stevens & Lee in April and start Saxton & Stump LLC, a medical malpractice defense Arm with offices in Lancaster County and Harrisburg.

The firm opened for business April 23 - the day the two amicably split from Stevens & Lee. All 16 lawyers ofthe Stevens & Lee's health care litigation and riskmanagement group went with the new firm, along with five paralegals.

The two then created the firm's new model by hiring about a dozen health care professionals to cover as many bases as possible in defense of its clients.

They specifically designed the model to combat the Philadelphia firms moving into the market. Saxton & Stump has five doctors, six nurses, a psychologist and a health policy expert on the staff full time.

"These are firms that are very large and very well resourced," Saxton said of the out-of-town firms he and other local lawyers have noticed coming in to the market. "We didn't want our clients to be out-resourced.''

In addition to work on cases, they're traveling to the firm's clients to lead training sessions and examine each operation to keep those clients out of the courtroom.

"You talkto our clients - physicians, hospitals, nursing homes - and they're sick of all this litigation," Saxton said. "They can't stand the lawsuits."

Cases dropping, awards rising

In Pennsylvania, the incidence ofmedicalmalpractice payments has greatly decreased since the high-water mark of 1999, when health care professionals made 1,729 malpractice payments. In 2013, there were only 943 payments made, a drop of more than 45 percent, according to statistics from the National Practitioner Data Bank.

A medical malpractice payment is the "result of a settlement or judgment of a written complaint or claim," according to the NPDB.

Pennsylvania's tort reform in 2002 and subsequent additions, which puts limits on how personal injury suits could be filed, cut down on the number of cases.

However, the amounts of the payments have gone up at an even higher rate. In 1999, there were only five awards of more than $2 million in Pennsylvania, butin 2013 there were 12. Only 197 awards were between $500,000 and $2 million in 1999, but in 2013, the number grew to 381. Payments of less than $100,000 went from 611 in 1999 to 223 in 2013.

That makes medical malpractice cases more lucrative for lawyers but harder to find. The increased competition and complexity of the new laws has driven some local attorneys out of the niche.

"The folks who used to dabble in it, they're not dabbling anymore," Stump said.

Philadelphians moving in

Jim Beasley Jr., managing member of Philadelphia-based The Beasley Firm LLC, said he spends more time working on Central Pennsylvania cases than he did five years ago. Most times, however, he said it's because of referrals or midstate residents calling him.

In March, Beasley filed a $10 million medical malpractice suit against Penn State Hershey Medical Center in Derry Township, two of its doctors and the radiology department.

"We do have a lot of things going on in the middle of the state, but we also have some in Pittsburgh and Erie," he said. "It's a 'have gun, will travel' thing."

Leslie M. Fields, a partner who specializes in medical malpractice litigation at Costopoulos, Foster & Fields in Lemoyne, said she, too, has noticed Philadelphia litigation firms expanding their reach into Central Pennsylvania.

The new laws, the expense of resources and the general difficulty of the work makes medical malpractice a tough area for lawyers to succeed in, she said.

"It's not for the faint of heart," Fields said. "I would agree that unless you are experienced and focused on this area of law, it's probably not a good idea to be in it. The cases are very time consuming, and they're very expensive to prosecute."

Even if there are fewer cases, medical malpractice suits won't disappear. Saxton said he hopes the newfirm design he and Stump are pioneering in this region can cut further into the number of suits filed.

"They're under attack" from litigation, Saxton said ofthe health care industry. "We're hoping to create safer practices."

YOUR TAKE

Have an opinion about this issue? Email us at [email protected].

"The folks who used to dabble in it, they're not dabbling anymore."

Christopher A. Stump, Saxton & Stump LLC

BY MICHAEL SADOWSKI

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