Law Commons^™

This Note argues that courts commonly fail to identify precisely the injury in lost chance cases and accordingly have failed to measure damages in a way that accurately compensates the plaintiff’s injuries. Lost chance cases are medical malpractice cases in which the injured victim has a preexisting medical condition from which she is unlikely to recover, but the defendant’s negligence has reduced further the victim’s likelihood of recovering. A majority of courts that allow recovery in lost chance cases have adopted a proportional valuation method that values the plaintiff’s damages by multiplying the percentage reduction in the chance of recovery …