Personal Injury Law

Structured Settlements in Medical Malpractice Cases

By JimReed

My good friend, Dov Apfel, a medical malpractice attorney from Maryland who handles birth injury cases, wrote a very informative article in the December issue of Trial magazine (pasted below) about structured settlements in cerebral palsy medical malpractice cases.  

Put most simply, a structured settlement means that rather than receiving all of the settlement money at one time, it is received in future installment payments.  There are often huge financiallbenefits to structured settlements and I will post about them in a separate article.  However, structures can be complex so it is important that the plaintiff’s attorney know exactly what they are doing so they don’t screw this up.

As experienced medical malpractice attorneys know all too well, sometimes arriving at an agreed-upon settlement amount with your adversary is just the beginning of a whole lot of work that is necessary to structure a settlement in a way that is most beneficial to your client.  In fact, competent counsel know that you cannot begin to properly evaluate any settlement offer until you have already thought through exactly how any settlement amount will be received and allocated. 

Accordingly, I believe that it is imperative in any substantial case that you perform your structured settlement analysis BEFORE you undertake any settlement negotiations.  I can’t tell you the number of times my cases have benefitted from my conversations with structured settlement experts who pointed out subtle issues that made a big difference in the ultimate settlement of my case. 

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Full post as published by New York Injury Law Blog on January 28, 2008 (boomark / email).