Not every bad medical outcome is malpractice — and knowing the difference is where a careful lawyer earns their reputation. In this video, Keith E. Galliher, Jr., founder and principal attorney of The Galliher Law Firm in Las Vegas, explains why he is highly selective about the medical malpractice cases he takes.
Galliher outlines the rigorous process behind a legitimate malpractice claim: assessing whether negligence is even a reasonable possibility, ordering the complete medical record, and retaining a qualified specialist to review the care before a case moves forward. He is candid about the costs, the difficult conversations, and the sobering trial statistics — and explains that when The Galliher Law Firm does take a malpractice case, it’s because he believes a serious wrong occurred and that he can prove it to a jury.
Transcript
First of all, I’m very careful about taking medical malpractice cases. The problem with medical malpractice cases is that a lot of clients believe that if something went wrong during a medical procedure — for example, a surgery — there has to be malpractice. The answer is no. There doesn’t have to be malpractice; you can have a bad result without malpractice being committed.
So the first thing you have to do when you have a client that comes in and tells you a story about what happened to them is assess it to determine whether there’s a reasonable possibility that medical malpractice was committed. If there was, you have to order all the records — hospital records, surgical records, office visit records — and then you have to hire an expert. When I talk about that, I mean a physician that’s trained in the area. For example, if it’s a urological surgery, you have to hire a urological surgeon. Those people aren’t easy to find, but there are expert witness services that you can use to locate and hire these people. So you have to put some upfront money on the case, which the client normally can’t afford. You have everything reviewed, then you get a preliminary opinion from the expert who says, “Yes, there is malpractice, and here’s why,” or “No, there isn’t malpractice, and here’s why.”
Sometimes you have to sit down with the client and give them the bad news: “Look, I’ve had this looked at by a recognized expert. He tells me there’s no malpractice here, and here’s why.” What I’ve found historically is that clients are generally satisfied when they’re told that, because you let them know that if you institute litigation in the case, there are a tremendous number of costs to be incurred. In medical malpractice cases, the success rate of cases that are not settled and go to trial is kind of abysmal — it’s usually about a 10 to 15% win rate for the plaintiff and about an 85 to 90% win for the defendant. So from my standpoint, if I take a medical malpractice case, it’s because I truly believe that the doctor did something horribly wrong and I feel I can prove it to a jury.
