Originally Posted by WHBM
Not at all.
. . .
$25k for the claimant and $25k for the lawyer. No case in court. That's how lawyers get paid without winning, in fact without even starting. Being lawyers they know how to avoid getting done for blackmail as a result of all this.
Sorry, that's more mythology, WHBM. The kind of "nuisance settlement" you describe is scarce to the point of nonexistence in the medical malpractice insurance field, where most of the liability insurance companies are physician-owned. Defendant physicians have absolute veto power over any settlement (they're called "consent policies").
In fact, just the opposite of the scenario you describe is much more prevalent: the malpractice insurance companies frequently spend $500K in out-of-pocket costs to defend an arguably meritorious case that could have been settled early for $200K without that large costs expenditure -- only to settle it for $350K on the eve of trial, for a total outlay of $850K. Meanwhile, the out-of-pocket costs advanced by the plaintiff's attorney to get the case prepared for trial (I do not mean attorney fees or overhead) have whittled the plaintiff's ultimate net recovery to $100K or less. Everyone "loses" except the defense lawyers, who get paid at every step of the way (like taxicab drivers, the farther they drive the higher the fee).
In contrast, the plaintiff's (patient's) lawyer took the risk of losing the $250K he/she advanced to prepare the case, which is a huge risk when you consider that over 75% of cases that go to trial are won by the defense. And, I say again, the plaintiff's lawyer only gets paid and only gets his/her expenses reimbursed if and when the plaintiff prevails at trial or by settlement.
The insurance companies' long-range global strategy is to make any "victories" by patients as bitter as possible, and thereby to discourage plaintiff's attorneys from pursuing future medical malpractice cases. And it is working: the numbers of malpractice claims filed has been dropping, insurers' inflation-adjusted payouts are dropping, and lawmakers are swallowing the big lie of "tort reform" (which does not reduce doctors' insurance premiums and will not solve the very real crisis in excalating insurance costs). Predictably, plaintiff's attorneys are coming to the realization that they can make more money with far less risk by pursuing other meritorious cases besides medical malpractice claims.