Does This Medical Malpractice Law Need to be Changed in Virginia?
Before you can serve a medical malpractice lawsuit in Virginia, you must first have a health care provider give you a “certificate of merit,” an opinion that the case has merit. The Supreme Court of State of Washington just struck down its certificate of merit law. I posted the opinion on my firm’s website and also wote a blog about it. I put a copy of the statute in the Virginia Child Injury Lawyer blog entitled “Virginia Certificate of Merit Statute.”
Virginia has required a certificate of merit since 2005, and I don’t know of any constitutional challenges to the law since it was enacted here. Many medical malpractice lawyers in Virginia have not been strongly opposed to the law because it is a way of validating the claim. But, what is an injured person to do when the doctor or hospital personnel either leave out or put things into the medical records that are not true? If the contents of the medical records keeps an injured person from getting a certificate of merit, and facts could be discovered in the legal process to show the errors in the medical records, then the law protects the health care provider from defending a legitimate claim. Is that fair?
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