• At Concurring Opinions, Dave Hoffman discussed a working paper co-authored with Christina Boyd entitled, “Litigating toward Settlement,” that examines the factors that make a case more likely to reach a settlement. Among the conclusions reached: the more motions filed, the more likely settlement becomes (this is sort of counterintuitive because you might think the opposite is true – the more hard-fought a case, the more likely it is to be resolved by jury verdict); a plaintiff’s success on a motion speeds settlement more than a defendant’s victory; and cases presided over by women judges are nearly twenty-five percent more likely to settle than cases with male judges.

• An article published in the journal Health Affairs argues that foreign-educated doctors (now nearly a quarter of US doctors) perform equally well as their US-trained counterparts. The New York Times has the story. The article suggests that while, in the past, foreign-born doctors lagged behind their US-trained counterparts, by the 1990s, they began besting US-born doctors on many standardized tests in internal medicine.
  Now I am aware of research suggesting that doctors from elite medical schools perform better than their peers who attend inferior schools. But this new research about the quality of foreign-educated doctors shouldn’t surprise any regular readers of this blog. Competent doctors don’t need to be hyper-educated savants whose heads are crammed with medical knowledge; they simply need to be modest and conscientious followers of medical protocols to avoid committing most medical errors.
  I’m convinced that the number one thing we could do to lower the cost of health care in the United States is to increase the number of doctors by “lowering” academic standards (e.g., making it easier for foreign-educated doctors to practice medicine) and instituting more rigorous medical error protocols.

This blog is maintained by the Boston personal injury lawyers at The Law Office of Alan H. Crede.