What is the average medical malpractice award in North Carolina?

It isn’t the award that matters, it is how much you actually get after a judge has knocked the claim down!

Proving Malpractice in NC is a little difficult. These are your odds!

Among the 895 North Carolina cases Vidmar examined, just eighty-four reached the stage of trial by jury; plaintiffs prevailed on the issue of liability in seventeen of the cases. There were three awards of at least $ 1 million, along with one for $ 750,000 and two for $ 300,000. The remainder of the trials, though, resulted in much more modest sums, down to $ 4,000. “The most striking impression from these verdict statistics is that plaintiffs did not do well with juries,” writes Vidmar. “They won less than one case in five. When they did receive an award, the amount was usually low.”

Using the North Carolina data, Vidmar also concludes that most claims grow from serious injuries. Minor or emotional injuries accounted for 5 percent of claims; most claims were based on temporary disability, permanent partial disability, permanent total disability, or that most disabling of medical outcomes, death. Out-of-court settlements occurred with greater frequency in cases involving the most serious injuries, including partial or total disabilities; so did jury trials. The apparent message: The big-deal undertaking of a court case can’t be rationalized apart from a big-deal grievance.

So a whooping 17 out of 895 cases got any money at all!