Todd Gurney on Medical Malpractice and Advocacy for Patient Safety

How you doing? I’m Todd Gurney. I’m a medical malpractice attorney at the Eisen Law Firm in Cleveland, Ohio.

Well, out of law school, I got a job at a small employment law firm. And about a year into the practice, the firm got bought out by a larger firm and I decided to go in a different direction. There was an attorney in my building who did all medical malpractice litigation. I didn’t really know anything about it. He had a big trial coming up and needed some help. So I came on board, went, we tried this case for two weeks out of town in Toledo. We got a $3 .75 million verdict for our client. And I’ve been here ever since. It’s about 17 years ago.

So my firm, we’re a boutique firm. handle exclusively medical negligence and wrongful death cases. So we represent individuals and families who have suffered serious or catastrophic injuries as a result of some medical mistake.

Yeah, so what sets us apart is our focus on medical negligence cases. There’s a lot of personal injury firms that advertise car accident cases, slip and falls, medical malpractice. But when it comes to the real malpractice cases, they don’t wanna get involved. They’re too complex, complicated, expensive, risky, and that’s really all we do. So, our focus enables us to really stay in our lane and really have expertise in this narrow field of law that we practise.

So I’m sorry, I’m not sure I really understand your question.

Yeah, so we do really all kinds of medical malpractice. So, you know, in medicine, most of the doctors these days are specialised, right? You got your OBGYN, you got your heart surgeons, got your neurosurgeons, primary care docs, anaesthesia, emergency medicine. We really handle, you know, all kinds of medical cases, right? Whether it’s someone that went into the emergency room with a, you know, specific condition that wasn’t diagnosed or treated right away. If something bad happens, they suffer some permanent injury or even die. Other cases where someone goes in for surgery and the anesthesiologist maybe doesn’t pay close enough attention post -operatively, person’s having breathing problems. Really, we run the gamut of the medical field. So anytime someone goes to a doctor or a hospital and suffers some type of significant permanent injury, those are the people that we’re really trying to help out.

So to continue doing what we’re doing. We’ve been doing this for a long time. My firm’s been around since 1976 and really has been, really since then, focusing on representing victims of medical malpractice. Most of our cases come from referrals from other attorneys who know about us, who’ve seen us in action, and who trust us with their clients, their friends and their family members to represent them when something really bad has happened.

Todd Gurney (04:30)
The entire state of Ohio. Yeah, I got cases right now. I got cases going on in Columbus. Just finished one up in Cincinnati, Toledo, several in Cleveland, but yeah, really all over all over Ohio.

So that’s an interesting question. You know, marketing is tough when it comes to personal injury work. There are some bigger firms that really, you know, spend a lot of money marketing. We don’t do that. We’ve never done that. We don’t have, you’ll never see us on TV or an ad on TV. Most of our cases come from referrals. You know, we’ve been around, we got a website, we got a good website. We do get calls, you know, all the time about cases, but most of the time, It’s hard to get into that market and compete with these bigger firms. But as I mentioned earlier, most of those firms don’t really handle the medical malpractice cases that we take on. So they may get called about those cases, but eventually, they’ll usually refer them to us or a select few other attorneys that actually have the focus and expertise to take on those types of cases.

I’m sorry, I didn’t hear the last part.

Yeah, so some of the biggest challenges really are the changes that the legislature has made to the laws, specifically in Ohio. They keep making it more difficult to bring malpractice cases, more difficult to recover on malpractice cases. You know, there’s a cap on the amount of money that you can get for a lifetime of pain and suffering. So in Ohio, for example, if you go to the doctor and they you know, cause some mistake or make some mistake and it causes an injury and you lose one leg. You know, you’re capped at the amount of money you can get for pain and suffering for the rest of your life. Now, if you happen to lose two legs instead of one leg, you’re still subject to the same cap. If you happen to lose two legs and one arm, it’s still the same cap. And if you lose both legs and both arms, you’re only entitled to the same amount of money as someone who only lost one leg.

And I think that’s completely unfair, arbitrary and unreasonable, but that’s the laws that they’ve passed in Ohio. Similarly, they’re trying to make it shorten the time period where you can bring a claim. There’s just all sorts of hurdles and really minefields to navigate in this field of law and so staying on top of all of that and continuing to find ways to help clients even despite all of these unfair laws is really what is probably the biggest challenge that we have in this field.

I think you really got to focus on an area of law that you can excel in. The field of law is so broad, to be a jack of all trades and master of none, I think is really difficult in today’s modern climate. I think that the key, at least in my opinion, is to find your lane and try and stay in your lane and excel at what you do.

Yes. Yes.

You know, it’s interesting. I think that, if doctors and hospitals would be more forthcoming and honest with patients. I think there’d be a lot fewer lawsuits. And I think that if doctors and hospitals paid more attention to patient safety than to profit, there would be a lot less medical malpractice litigation. And although that would be bad for my business, that truly is the goal of my firm and I know of my colleagues is to make Healthcare more safe for patients in Ohio and in this country. And so ultimately at the end of the day, that’s really what we’re trying to do is Make these doctors make these hospitals care more about patient safety so that there aren’t as many injured victims.

Thanks for having me, I appreciate it.