Attorney Rodger Martin:
Rodger G. Martin is an attorney and partner at the Atlanta office Hall, Booth, Smith and Slover. A majority of Martin's litigation clients involve the defense of physicians and hospitals. He has extensive experience in all aspects of birth trauma litigation including dystocia, cerebral palsy and fetal demise. Martin is well versed in HIPAA laws and regulations as well as EMTALA, anti-kickback and the Stark laws.

About Martin's talk:
Initially Martin discussed how his firm utilizes legal nurse consultants:
ü  Obtain and organize medical records.
ü  Prepare requests for production.
ü  Locate expert witnesses.
ü  Create generalized and customized chronologies.
Martin then employed case studies (obstetric and cardiac) to engage the nurses in countering strengths and weakness of case theories for both sides in medical negligence cases.

Some discussion followed concerning the gross negligence requirement for emergency department cases unique to Georgia law. Martin explained the gross negligence stipulation came with the tort reform law of 2005, commonly referred to as Senate Bill 3 ("SB 3"). When asked why it existed, Martin, who was involved in the original legislation, replied that emergency department staff frequently have no health information available on patients who come in unconscious or semi-conscious and without family.

Martin reviewed the Georgia SB 3 requirements for medical expert witnesses to testify in medical malpractice cases in Georgia, primarily the 9-11-9.1 Rule. This rule requires experts to have practiced in the same specialty as the subject of the lawsuit for 3 of the 5 years prior to the negligent event of the lawsuit.

The Hall, Booth, Smith and Slover attorney continued by describing his method of obtaining good experts which is to do a medical literature search related to the issue at hand and contact authors of the literature.

"Very good talk, I very much enjoyed hearing Rodger Martin," Buddenhagen noted.

Atlanta Legal Nurse Consultant:
Liz Buddenhagen, principal at Buddenhagen & Associates, is an "expert" expert locator. "My firm has been locating excellent, qualified and appropriate experts for Atlanta attorneys for 6 years," said Buddenhagen. For more information view website www.Legal-Nurse-Consultant-LNC.com, email Liz@BuddenhagenLNC.com or call 770-725-2997.