Trial Guides would like to recognize trial attorney John K. Powers of Powers & Santola in Albany, NY. A longtime Trial Guides customer, John has a string of impressive verdicts on behalf of seriously injured people.
John's most recent case is especially important because it forced a hospital to institute important safety changes to reduce future medical errors and deaths. In the case, a young, healthy mother bled to death following a C-section. The $5.2 million settlement included additional non-monetary conditions that required the hospital to conduct an annual series of patient safety lectures, named for the mother, for the next twenty years; to purchase a maternal and neonatal simulator to be used in staff training on the labor and delivery unit; and to change procedures on the use of a machine that monitors a patient's vital signs during childbirth.
After resolving the case, John let us know, "There is no question that, during discovery, I used Rick Friedman and Pat Malone's "Rules of the Road" method. The primary issue in the case was the failure of the defendant obstetrician to diagnose and treat the plaintiff's maternal hemorrhage. During discovery, I took video depositions of the 13 physicians who treated the plaintiff in the 15 hours between her C-section and her death. I asked each witness the same "Rules" questions, phrasing them in such a way that they could not be disputed. All of the witnesses, including the defendant, agreed to the "Rules," thereby establishing the causation theory of the plaintiff's case. Had the case proceeded to trial, jurors would have seen the videos of all the doctors agreeing to our safety rules."
Since its release in 2005, Rules of the Road has been the best selling legal text on proving liability in cases where rules are not always clear. Lawyers throughout the country have used the technique set forth in Rules of the Road to help them create a set of standards that juries can understand. The book has also been adapted into a litigation college by AAJ, and is the subject of many CLE lectures throughout the country.