A surge in medical malpractice cases | Morning Newsletter
🗓️ And making up for lost time on Leap Day
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The Morning Newsletter
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Good morning! It’s mostly sunny and somewhat cooler with a high near 41.
This particular Thursday — or as I like to call it, Friday Jr. — also happens to be Leap Day. Why February gets an extra date every four years is quite the astronomical saga, so stay tuned for an intriguing history lesson.
But first, our top story highlights the significant rise in the number of medical malpractice lawsuits last year in Philadelphia, which coincides with a change in a rule that dictates where cases can be filed.
— Paola Pérez (@pdesiperez, morningnewsletter@inquirer.com)
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Philly saw more malpractice cases filed in 2023, in part due to a rule change that now allows cases to be filed in the city rather than in the county where the incident occurred.
By the numbers: 544 cases were filed in Philadelphia last year, an increase of 33% from the average annual caseload in the three years before the pandemic.
“It looks like we’re settling into a number that’s around 45 filings per month, which will be the new normal for Philadelphia,” said Daniel J. Anders, an administrative judge in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court’s trial division, during a webinar on the court’s new system for managing medical malpractice cases.
Playing catch-up: The number of lawsuits filed in Philadelphia fell during the pandemic, but a backlog still formed. In response, the Philadelphia trial court developed a process to move cases through the system more quickly and encourage more cases to settle long before trial.
Cases progressing through the courts before the rule change already resulted in large verdicts last year against Temple University Health System, the University of Pennsylvania Health System, and a group including the Rothman Orthopaedic Institute. The city’s courts last year yielded four verdicts of at least $10 million.
Keep reading for a closer look at the rise in cases and to see how the trend toward high verdicts is starting to affect Pennsylvania’s malpractice insurance market.
What you should know today
ATVs and dirt bikes have long been a source of resident complaints. Philly police are ramping up enforcement, starting with a Tuesday sweep that ended with 15 confiscated ATVs.
U.S. Marshals are hoping for additional confirmed sightings of escaped prisoner Alleem Borden after he was again able to elude authorities in West Philadelphia Tuesday afternoon. Investigators are offering a $2,500 reward for information that leads directly to Borden’s arrest.
Mayor Cherelle Parker called on Philly businesses to follow her administration’s lead and require remote employees to return to in-person work, saying a cleaner and safer future for Center City is “only sustainable if they come back to the office.”
A 31-year-old woman was shot and killed by her ex-boyfriend in South Philadelphia on Tuesday night, police said — just days after she reported his abuse to detectives and a warrant was issued for his arrest.
A Philadelphia judge has dismissed charges against death-row inmate Daniel Gwynn, who claimed for decades that he was wrongly convicted of murder in a 1994 West Philadelphia arson incident that left one woman dead and others injured.
After battling for years to take over Republic First Bancorp, the largest Philly-based bank, South Jersey business and political power broker George Norcross now says he doesn’t want it after all.
Five of the six family members who perished in a shooting and house fire in East Lansdowne earlier this month died of gunshot wounds, Delaware County officials said Wednesday, including the man who opened fire at police officers after turning the gun on his relatives and then set the family home ablaze. The investigation into the incident is now closed.
Flyers goalie Carter Hart and his four codefendants will be tried together and have opted for a jury trial in their upcoming sexual assault case.
Vietnam Restaurant has been named to the James Beard Foundation’s America’s Classics list and will join several other Philly restaurants being honored at the prestigious ceremony in June.
Philadelphia will be smackdown central this April when WrestleMania comes to the Linc, Wells Fargo Center and the Convention Center. We have the full rundown on how to attend and what to expect.
🎤 Now I’m passing the mic to Tony Wood, who writes about where we all live — the atmosphere.
Feb. 29 is the one day every four years where we learn that we really can make up for lost time — in this case 1,440 minutes, or 24 hours. This all gets rather cosmically complicated, and unraveling it was quite a saga, but here are the SparkNotes:
It takes Earth about 365¼ days to make the annual 574 million-mile trip around the sun. Our calendars don’t do quarter days. Thus, every four years we give day-deprived February an extra day for the sake of keeping whole numbers in our yearly scorekeeping.
We can thank Julius Caesar, a lesser-known astronomer, for bringing order to the calendar. But time flies when you’re hurtling through space at 67,000 mph and things got out of kilter.
It took Renaissance Pope Gregory XIII to get us where we are today. We should be good for the next few thousand years. — Tony Wood
Leap days will eventually be obsolete, give or take 4 million years. Read on for Tony’s full breakdown of this phenomenon.
🧠 Trivia time
An Academy Award-nominated actor and star from the TV series Empire said it’s “immoral” to tax descendants of slaves. A federal judge in Philadelphia just ordered that actor to pay nearly $1 million in back taxes.
Who was it?
A) Malik Yoba
B) Jussie Smollett
C) Terrence Howard
D) Trai Byers
Think you know? Check your answer.
What we're...
📸 Browsing: A gallery of scenes on film from Florida during Phillies spring training, captured by Inquirer staff photographer Heather Khalifa.
💻 Anticipating: Flyers beat reporter Jackie Spiegel’s Reddit AMA. She’ll be answering your burning questions tonight as the trade deadline approaches. Join the conversation at 6 p.m.
👀 Watching: What’s next for Congress after Mitch McConnell announced he will step down as Senate Republican leader.
🧩 Unscramble the anagram
Hint: Verizon Hall, the cello-shaped concert room at the Kimmel Center, is getting a new moniker — something with a decidedly more Philadelphia flair.
ADORE MALLS RIHANNA
Email us if you know the answer. We’ll select a reader at random to shout out here. Cheers to Parella Long who correctly guessed Wednesday’s answer: Fairmount Park. The hint was “Home of the Roots Picnic festival.”
The weekend is almost here. Thanks for starting your morning with The Inquirer.
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