Rodney K Adams
Medical Malpractice Defense
LeClairRyan's Medical Malpractice Defense team is formidable in both size and experience level. All of our partners are first-chair trial lawyers, and many of our veteran litigators have been recognized as “Super Lawyers†or "Best Lawyers in America" by legal publications from across the country. This “bring-out-the-big-guns†strategy is well advised given the enormous scope and scale of the U.S. medical liability crisis, with its profusion of costly—and often spurious—legal actions against medical providers and professionals of all types. According to the Physician Insurers Association of America, for example, the median medical jury award in medical liability cases more than tripled from 1997 to 2006, with the average award during this period rising from $347,134 to $637,134. Meanwhile, median and average settlements rose from $100,000 to $204,500, and from $212,861 to $335,847, respectively.
Our Medical Malpractice Defense team has decades of combined experience in representing physicians, dentists, chiropractors, hospitals, nursing homes, managed care organizations, medical colleges, self-insured health systems and other clients in state and federal courts and before various professional boards. Unlike some of our competitors, our attorneys do not shy away from court, where they have a proven track record of successfully defending clients, often in the most difficult of venues. Indeed, in the last three years alone we have tried 60 medical malpractice cases to verdict.
Our team represents clients in matters related to an array of legal issues for a diverse group of medical specialties, including anesthesiology, dentistry, emergency medicine, family practice, gastroenterology, general surgery, internal medicine, neurosurgery, nursing, obstetrics and gynecology, oncology, ophthalmology, orthopedic surgery, pediatrics, podiatry, radiology and urology. Given these divergent areas of focus, we are able to match each case with the strength and expeience of a particular lawyer. This “deep bench†is part of the reason our attorneys are frequently cited in publications listing the largest medical malpractice defense verdicts of the year.
Our attorneys serve as national counsel to several major health insurance companies and also help local healthcare providers and their counsel deal with matters related to complex litigation. Our services range from helping clients monitor their claims reserves to acting as primary counsel at trial. Medical malpractice litigation arising from birth trauma and brain injury can be particularly costly and complex, and we have extensive experience with such cases.
While most firms offer post-event counsel, we offer real-time counsel to help clients manage potentially explosive issues—whether an out-of-control patient, a thorny question about privacy or an unannounced investigation. Indeed, our attorneys routinely work with patient-care teams, public relations staff and law enforcement agencies to resolve problematic situations as they happen. The goal is to be proactive to reduce our clients’ liability exposure whenever possible. Toward that end, we often have standing arrangements with clients to provide such services around the clock.
Our experienced attorneys, many of whom have served on the bioethics committees of hospitals and on the boards of long-term care facilities, are available to educate clients and their staff on emerging risk-management issues. Adept at handling clients’ administrative needs, we routinely represent healthcare professionals in tribunals such as medical staff credentialing committees and state licensing boards. We also appear before administrative law judges on matters related to reimbursement and taxation. With decades of combined experience in both institutional representation and at trial, our arsenal of “big guns†has indeed earned a national reputation for obtaining positive results.
Because of our team’s breadth of knowledge, we provide well-reasoned case analyses to assist our clients with pretrial litigation decisions and with their assessments for each case. We are absolutely committed to serving the needs of our medical care providers and their insurers. If mediation is the proper resolution to a particular case, we will recommend mediation, with all of the supporting case assessment to justify such alternatives to trial. Our clients will always be aware of case developments and will have the information necessary for every step of the pretrial litigation process.
Rodney K Adams
LeClair Ryan
951 E Byrd St - 8th Floor
Richmond VA 23219
Tel: 804 343-4173
Fax: 804 783-2294
E-mail: rodney.adams@leclairryan.com
Board Certified Civil Trial Lawyer - National Board of Legal Specialty Certification
Related Industries
* Healthcare
Related Practices
* Medical Malpractice Defense
* Medical Products Liability
Mr. Adams focuses his practice on advising and defending health care providers in matters involving patient care issues and other unique issues confronting risk managers. His guidance, whether during a strategic discussion or during a crisis, is based on his extensive trial and agency adjudication experience. Mr. Adams’ clients include physicians, hospitals, managed care organizations, medical colleges, nursing homes, self-insured health systems and other health care providers. He has spent over twenty-five years defending health care providers and has taken over seventy medical malpractice matters to verdict. Most of those matters involved catastrophic injury or death. He also represents health care providers before various boards of the Virginia Department of Health Professions.
Mr. Adams frequently lectures on bioethics, clinical research regulation, mental health law, medical record management, and risk management to such groups as the American College of Surgeons, American Society of Risk Management, Virginia Health Care Association, and VCU/Medical College of Virginia departmental grand rounds.
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