Medical Malpractice Depositions sketches, in broad outline, the planning, tactical and strategic approach of effectively and efficiently gathering, eliciting, preserving and presenting testimony from potential witnesses. Accordingly, this text presents, out of the thousands of problems and pitfalls in medical malpractice litigation, a glimpse of some of these problems and a possible method of handling and solving them. Medical Malpractice Depositions includes actual depositions (Forms) taken from depositions conducted by leading attorneys in the field. These Forms can be used by both plaintiff and defense counsel. In the book, the reader will be guided by an expert who took time from his practice to share both work product and analysis of the deposition process in medical malpractice litigation. Given recent statistics, litigators may reasonably conclude that pre-trial efforts control the outcome of their caseload far more often than trials do. In the array of discovery mechanisms employed on a routine basis, perhaps none is more important, and influential on a case result, than the testimony under oath of the principals to the case.
Medical Malpractice Depositions will generate insight and understanding of some of the problems faced when conducting depositions; aid the practitioner in formulating solutions or approaches to the problems that confront him or her; and sharpen the practitioner’s skills in gathering deposition testimony in general.
Michael Brophy is a seasoned trial attorney with more than 25 years of experience, and a partner at Goldberg Segalla. Working from the firm's Philadelphia, Pennsylvania office, Mr. Brophy has developed a specialty in the defense of psychiatric malpractice cases, as well as traditional medical malpractice litigation. He has been designated as lead trial counsel by health care organizations with both local and national affiliations. Mr. Brophy's success rate exceeds 90 percent in the more than fifty major cases he has taken to verdict. In addition to traditional activities, he has an active mediation practice and was a mediator in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania from 1991 to 1996. He also served as a Judge Pro Tempore for the Court of Common Pleas from 2005 to the present. Beyond authoring the present text, Medical Malpractice Depositions, he is the co-editor of numerous articles for the Law Journal Newsletter, Medical Malpractice Law and Strategy. Michael Brophy possesses an AV rating through Martindale-Hubbell.