Pennsylvania Superior Court holds that trial court correctly entered nonsuit on plaintiff’s corporate negligence claim for failing to show actual or constructive knowledge....more
Last month, in Mertis v. Oh, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania held that a physician subpoenaed for deposition in a malpractice case does not have unfettered discretion in choosing his or her attorney. Rather, the Supreme...more
Dinardo v. Kohler, 304 A.3d 1187 (Pa. 2023) - Both the trial court and the Superior Court found that the plaintiff’s claims were barred by the no felony conviction recovery rule. The plaintiff filed a medical malpractice suit...more
On January 1, 2023, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania unraveled a 20-year venue rule applicable to medical professional liability cases. Under the previous venue rule, a medical professional liability action may be brought...more
Key Points: Recent Pennsylvania Supreme Court actions may dramatically broaden the counties in which plaintiffs may file medical malpractice actions. Such actions can now be filed and litigated hundreds of miles from the...more
In a setback for Pennsylvania health care providers, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania approved an order amending the rules pertaining to the venue in which medical malpractice suits may be brought. The Pennsylvania Rules of...more
On August 25, 2022, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court approved changes to the state’s medical malpractice rules. These amendments end a 20-year policy that had limited the filing of medical malpractice lawsuits to the...more
On August 25, 2022, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania issued an Order amending Rules 1006, 2130, 2156, and 2179 of the Pennsylvania Rules of Civil Procedure, all of which pertain to venue in civil actions. The court’s...more
Today the Pennsylvania Supreme Court issued an Order amending PA’s rule of civil procedure pertaining to venue. The Court’s amendment eliminates the provision, put in place nearly two decades ago, which mandated that medical...more
On December 22, 2020, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania issued an opinion in Leight et al v. University of Pittsburgh Physicians et al, Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, No. 35 WAP 2019 determining the extent to which...more
In September, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court agreed with the urging of the Superior Court to hear an appeal on whether the Pennsylvania Peer Review Protection Act (PRPA or the Act) shields from discovery the evaluations of...more
In a further erosion of the peer review privilege, the Superior Court in, Leadbitter v. Keystone Anesthesia Consultants, Ltd., affirmed a discovery order compelling the production of the complete, un-redacted credentialing...more
In late December 2018, the Civil Procedural Rules Committee of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania announced a proposal to rescind the medical malpractice venue rule which, for the past 16 years, has required all medical...more
White and Williams, on behalf of various industry groups, including the Hospital and Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania, filed an amicus brief on November 14th urging the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to reconsider its...more
On October 31, 2019, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania decided Yanakos v. UPMC, et al. and declared the seven-year statute of repose under the Pennsylvania Medical Care Availability and Reduction of Error (“MCARE”) Act...more
In Yanakos v. UPMC, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, in a 4-3 decision, struck down the seven-year statute of repose in the Medical Care Availability and Reduction of Error (MCARE) Act as unconstitutional. MCARE’s statute of...more
The December 22, 2018 proposal by the Civil Procedural Rules Committee of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania to repeal the medical malpractice venue rule, Pa. R. Civ. P. 1006(a.1), which requires medical malpractice actions to...more
The proposal by the Civil Procedural Rules Committee of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania to repeal the medical malpractice venue rule, Pa. R. Civ. P. 1006(a.1), which requires medical malpractice actions to be brought in the...more
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania was facing a healthcare crisis as of 2002 due, in part, to costly medical malpractice litigation which was impairing the ability of Pennsylvania healthcare institutions to provide quality care...more
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled, on March 27, 2018, in Regenelli v. Boggs, Monogahela Valley Hospital and UPMC/ERMI that physician performance reviews of an ER physician, who was provided by ERMI to Mon Valley Hospital,...more
In June, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court issued a controversial opinion holding that a physician had to have face-to-face interaction with the patient to effectively obtain informed consent. This has raised heightened...more
Patients have come to expect that they will be actively involved in making decisions about their health care. Informed consent aids patient involvement and provides a process whereby a health care provider discusses a...more
A recent Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision will have a major impact on how physicians across the Commonwealth obtain informed consent from their patients. In Shinal v. Toms, 2017 WL 2655387 (Pa. June 20, 2017), the 4-3...more
In a 4-3 decision, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, overturning a Superior Court’s order, ruled that a jury could not consider information provided by the physician’s qualified staff in deciding whether a physician obtained...more
With the increased presence of qualified staff members in a physician’s office and the constant time-pressure on physicians, many patients rely heavily on individuals other than the physician to answer questions about...more