Juries are increasingly awarding “nuclear verdicts,” or those surpassing $10 million, in medical malpractice lawsuits, according to the American Medical Association.
The average amount of the top 50 medical malpractice verdicts has significantly increased in recent years, the AMA said in a Jan. 2 article on its website. In 2022, that average was $32 million. The next year saw $48 million, and the average was $56 million in 2024.
Wes Cleveland, a senior attorney at the AMA, said four trends are causing medical malpractice verdict awards to rapidly increase. He said one factor is the average medical liability claim rising, which Mr. Cleveland cited as the result of loss of public trust in healthcare and the corporatization of the industry.
Another trend is the “reptile theory,” which refers to when attorneys expand their argument from one patient’s case to project it as a public health issue for the community.
“It focuses on what could happen and not what did happen,” Mr. Cleveland said. “The idea is that you want to scare the jury to think that [for example] some negligence or some injury that occurred in the hospital doesn’t just hurt the plaintiff, it really threatens the entire community.”
Two other tactics include price anchoring, or when an attorney opens with a high figure for the verdict, hoping a higher verdict will be rendered as a result; and bullying, which can involve threatening a physician’s personal assets when pursuing a settlement.
Several states have recently passed laws or are considering measures to counteract these tactics, the AMA said.
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