Unqualified Expert Can Doom a Medical Malpractice Case
June 24, 2025
Expert witness testimony is crucial in establishing key elements of a medical malpractice lawsuit, such as:
- The standard of care: An expert witness with relevant experience explains the expected standard of care in a specific medical situation. This helps establish what a competent and reasonable healthcare provider would have done under similar circumstances.
- Deviation from the standard of care: An expert can explain how the defendant healthcare provider deviated from this standard.
- Causation: They can connect the defendant’s deviation from the standard of care directly to the patient’s injury.
Why an unqualified expert is problematic:
- Lack of credibility: If an expert lacks relevant experience or their qualifications are questionable, their testimony will be less persuasive and may even be dismissed by the court.
- Inability to meet legal requirements: Many states have specific rules about who can qualify as an expert witness in medical malpractice cases. For example, some states require the expert to practice in the same specialty as the defendant.
Examples of situations where an unqualified expert witness has harmed a case:
- Specialty mismatch: In one case, a New Jersey court dismissed a medical malpractice suit because the plaintiff’s medical expert, a general surgeon, lacked the same specialty as the defendant doctor who specialized in internal medicine.
- Lack of active clinical practice: The Ohio Supreme Court ruled that a physician employed in an executive position who did not directly oversee physicians treating patients was not qualified to testify as an expert witness because they did not meet the requirement of spending more than 50% of their time in “active clinical practice”.
- Insufficient experience in the specific area: A physician was disqualified from testifying as an expert witness in a case involving alleged negligence by hospital nurses because he lacked the requisite experience supervising, teaching, or instructing nurses in the specific area of the nursing standard of care at issue.
- Difficulty explaining complex concepts: An expert needs to communicate complex medical information clearly to a judge and jury who do not have medical backgrounds. An unqualified expert may struggle with this, making their testimony less effective.
A qualified expert witness is essential for a successful medical malpractice case.
Their testimony provides the necessary framework for establishing negligence, proving causation, and explaining complex medical issues. If an expert witness is deemed unqualified, it will lead to the need to replace the expert late in the game, which will lead to delays or potential dismissal of the case or removal from the docket. All things that can be avoided with proper screening of the expert.
Let Saponaro, Inc. take the burden off of you by referring you to an expert that meets all case and Court requirements.
