Practice Areas & Industries: Duane Morris LLP

Practice/Industry Group Overview

Duane Morris' Medical Malpractice Defense Group has a long history of representing institutions, physicians and other medical professionals in high-risk, high-exposure cases. Our lawyers have participated in pre-trial discovery, trials, appeals and mediations, as well as other forms of alternative dispute resolution, throughout the Delaware Valley and nationally.

Services Available

Medical Malpractice. Over the last 20 years, members of the Group have handled more than 1,000 medical malpractice matters. Since 1976, the Group has tried cases for a variety of private insurance carriers and for the Pennsylvania Professional Liability/Joint Underwriting Association, the statutory malpractice carrier in the Commonwealth. Our lawyers also represent a number of independent companies contracting with hospitals to supply emergency room services and other healthcare providers, including profusionists and nurse-midwives.

Related Product Liability. Members of the Medical Malpractice Defense Group often handle litigation involving medical, surgical and orthopedic devices, drugs and hospital equipment. The firm has also developed an extensive group of independent consultants.

L-Tryptophan Litigation. Duane Morris presently represents a Japanese manufacturer of a genetically engineered amino acid previously marketed as a food supplement. The product, L-Tryptophan, is alleged to have caused an epidemic in 1989 that resulted in the establishment by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of a new diagnostic entity called eosinophilia myalgia syndrome (EMS). There are more than 1,100 lawsuits nationwide seeking damages for ingestion of L-Tryptophan.

The firm serves as trial counsel for the manufacturer and other indemnified parties in cases pending in Pennsylvania and New Jersey state courts as well as cases in the federal district courts. The federal cases have been consolidated in multidistrict litigation. The firm also assists the manufacturer and coordinating counsel in Washington and New York on a number of cases brought in other jurisdictions and on overall case management strategy.

In the handling of these complex claims, our lawyers proposed and implemented in Philadelphia an innovative procedure for informal discovery designed to avoid the cost, repetition and inconvenience of formal pre-trial practice. The smooth exchange of information has resulted in many favorable settlements in Pennsylvania and throughout the country. The Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas Complex Tort Litigation Division judges have endorsed the system as an alternative to complicated adversarial discovery.

DES Litigation. Duane Morris has been an active participant on behalf of a number of companies in the diethylstilbestrol (DES) litigation in Pennsylvania for more than two decades. This drug allegedly caused in utero harm to offspring whose mothers ingested it while pregnant in an effort to avoid miscarriages. The litigation originally focused on cancer claims by the plaintiffs, but many of the newer cases center on alleged injuries to the children of DES-exposed mothers as well as DES sons.

Our Lawyers

Members of the Medical Malpractice Defense Group contribute to current literature on issues of interest to institutions and physicians. Our lawyers presently edit the Hayes Directory Legal Precedent Report, a joint venture between Duane Morris and Hayes Publishing, which is available by subscription as a looseleaf service or online through Lexis and Westlaw. The publication serves HMOs, hospitals and insurers involved with liability issues on emerging medical technologies.

Our lawyers have also served as editor for the Hospital Liability Issue of For The Defense, June 1992, a publication of the Defense Research Institute, written the Verdicts and Settlements Section of Medical Malpractice Law and Strategy, published by Leader publications, and provided a chapter on medical malpractice defense for Breast Cancer Treatment: A Comprehensive Guide to Management edited by Fowble, Goodman, Glick and Rosato.

Lawyers in the Group regularly speak on related issues to a variety of organizations, including the Pennsylvania Bar Institute, the Philadelphia Bar Association and the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. We present an annual series of lectures to the students of Thomas Jefferson University School of Medicine. Members of the Group also serve as Directors of medically related nonprofit corporations.

For more information, please contact Beatrice O'Donnell or any of the practice members referenced in the Attorney Listing.