Fighting back against frivolous lawsuits

From Ohio:

Dr. Zev Maycon has found his name attached to four malpractice lawsuits in the
past three years.

In each case, he was dropped from the suits before they went to trial. But with the last one, he'd had enough. He asked the judge to sanction the plaintiff's attorney for filing a frivolous lawsuit against him in Stark County Common Pleas Court.
Visiting Judge Roger G. Lile agreed with Maycon, finding ``frivolous conduct'' by the attorney, Catherine Little, and ordering her to pay him $6,000.

``Basically, they had no real case against me,'' said Maycon, a Canton gastroenterologist. ``The expert witness they had had no criticism of me.... When I couldn't get dropped from the lawsuit and was essentially extorted, I said, `This has to stop. This is wrong.' ''

An interesting statistic buried in the article:

Nationwide, slightly more than six out of every 10 malpractice suits filed are
either dropped or dismissed, according to the Physician Insurers Association of
America. More than three in 10 are settled before trial. Fewer than one in 10
makes it to trial, and, of those, patients prevail in only one in five cases.

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