Class 2 – September 1 st, 2009 Health and Medical Research for Lawyers: Molly Brownfield

 Some Context…Movie Clip from “The Verdict”  Quick Review of Medical Resources  Current Awareness Resources  Secondary Sources  Primary Sources  Practice-Oriented Materials

 See Megan’s PowerPoint from Week #1  MedlinePlus, PubMed, government and professional medical association websites, etc.  Purpose: Obtaining general overview of medical terms, medical conditions, best practices/procedures, clinical studies and more in order to do initial evaluation of client’s case, prepare for depositions, assess potential damages, etc.

 Going back to “The Verdict” scene…could use MedlinePlus to obtain some background information on General Anesthesia.

 Professional Organizations  CLEs, Conferences, Newsletters, etc.  Newspapers, News Station Websites, and Blogs  State Bar Journals and Legal Newspapers (many available through Lexis and Westlaw)  Emerging Issues on Lexis  Purpose: Keeping abreast of current issues and developments that might affect your practice and clients, finding relevant contact information, etc.

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Types of Secondary Sources  Legal Encyclopedias  American Law Reports (ALR)  Restatements  Uniform Laws and Model Acts  Treatises  Law Reviews & Journals Purpose of Secondary Sources  Explain and analyze the law  Provide background to a legal topic  Contain citations/references to primary sources and other secondary sources  Persuasive only – no binding authority

The ALR contain articles called annotations which summarize the law on a particular issue Annotations illustrate points of law by providing “leading” cases that fall on opposite sides of an issue Annotations are also useful because they provide citations to primary materials (cases, statutes, regulations) or other secondary materials (texts, forms, law review articles, etc.)

Legal Encyclopedias: Arranged alphabetically by legal topic State general propositions of law with introductory explanations Contain citations to primary law Common-law oriented Updated by annual pocket parts Can be State or Subject- Specific Rarely or never cited – i.e. not very persuasive

 Lets try searching for some background on medical malpractice actions  I’m going to do a T&C search for “medical malpractice” and select “Table of Contents only” to limit my search to only those Am.Jur. articles that have my phrase in the title.

Statutes & Cases (state-specific)

 Click on U.S. State Materials  We’ll come back to the Directory page in a bit to look at “Topical Practice Areas”

 Let’s imagine we’re looking for New York materials

 Can search the statutes using Terms and Connectors or Natural Language  Remember your Fields search options – can search for a term in the title of the statute, the citation, etc.

 Can also browse by title using the Table of Contents

 West’s Key Number Digest Outline allows you to do comprehensive searches for cases on a certain legal issue  You can click on West Key Number Digest Outline to browse the 400+ topics or;  You can click on “KeySearch” to identify your Key Number

 Back to “The Verdict” - How might we find medical malpractice cases involving anesthesia?

 From this page you can select your jurisdiction and add search terms  Here I’m going to add ‘anesthesia’ as a search term.

 West’s Key Number Digest Outline allows you to do comprehensive searches for cases on a certain legal issue  You can click on West Key Number Digest Outline to browse the 400+ topics

 As we saw in Westlaw, Lexis allows you to search the statutes using Terms and Connectors or Natural Language  Again, remember your Fields search options – can search for a term in the title of the statute, the citation, etc.

 Similar to West’s Key Number Digest Outline - allows you to do comprehensive searches for cases on a certain legal topic.

Two options – (1) on the left you can select a jurisdiction(s) and enter search terms; (2) on the right you can select a jurisdiction and search by Headnote.

 Pleading and Practice materials, Expert witness background information, jury instructions, damages, forms, etc.

 From the Directory page, you can access: 1.“Topical Practice Areas” – to find practice-oriented materials by topic 2.“Litigation” – to find practice- oriented materials by type 3.“Medical Litigator – more of a red herring (reference manuals and administrative material

 From Topical Practice Areas, you can browse based on your subject area.  “Professional Malpractice” will lead you to Medical Malpractice resources.  Click on Workers’ Compensation.

 The main menu might highlight materials for a specific state – one where this area of law may be a big deal.  Click on Forms at the bottom to see what kind of materials we’ll find.

 State-specific Pleading and Practice can be great sources of guidance – forms, drafting instructions, checklists, rules, etc.

 Lets try the All Expert Witness CV and Resume materials in the Litigation Database

 Looks promising, but…

 Medical Litigator’s Expert Witness Information is rather limited – only has physician directory which doesn’t provide in-depth expert CVs/resumes like we saw in Litigation Database.

Our Client, Mrs. Z, underwent a laparoscopic hysterectomy and had a large uterine fibroid removed in the process. After Mrs. Z was discharged from the hospital her bladder ruptured – causing her to return to the hospital for emergency surgery and to suffer tremendous pain and suffering. We’ve consulted with an expert, who upon examination of Mrs. Z’s medical records, says that Mrs. Z’s doctor cut the bladder during surgery. He noted further that the standard of care during this procedure is to inspect bladder before closing up. The opposing side’s expert says that the uterine fibroid weakened the walls of Mrs. Z’s bladder and caused it to rupture on its own. Is that defense medically possible or is a cut during surgery a more likely explanation?

Questions: 1. What sources should we consult to gain an overview? 2. Where would we look to find best practices for this procedure? 3. How can we do background research on the opposition’s medical expert to prepare for his deposition? 4. What resources should we consult to get an idea of damages that we might expect to obtain for Mrs. Z should we prevail?

 Could start with a search in MedlinePlus to get information about uterine fibroids

 Could link to a number of resources, including journal articles from here – directs you to PubMed

 Because DUL Databases can be handy for providing “Get it at Duke” links to full-text, lets try the Medline— Ovid databases (through the DUL Health and Medical Sci Databases)