Medical Malpractice Essentials: Proven strategies for screening cases and working with experts

Burton Bentley II, MD, FAAEM, CEO | Elite Medical Experts

Dr. Burton Bentley II is a board-certified Emergency Medicine physician and nationally recognized authority on medical liability, informed consent, and complex issues at the intersections of Medicine, Business & Law. As CEO of Elite Medical Experts, Dr. Bentley and his team have consulted on over 9000 medicolegal matters totaling over $3B at risk.

Dr. Bentley is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Arizona where he also earned his Doctorate in Medicine. He then completed a residency in Emergency Medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin where he served as a flight physician on nearly 100 emergency transports. Dr. Bentley practiced Emergency Medicine full-time for 21 years before stepping out in 2015 to pursue a novel medical device that he developed, patented, and commercialized. His device was acquired by Centurion Medical in 2016, and subsequently sold to Medline Industries. Throughout his entire medical career, Dr. Bentley has actively consulted on complex medicolegal issues, and in 2010 he founded Elite Medical Experts, a consulting firm that aligns professors of medicine and surgery as consulting and testifying experts in complex litigation.

Elite serves over 4,000 clients across the United States including law firms, governmental entities, corporate entities, and insurers. Dr. Bentley is frequently invited to lead medicolegal CLEs, and he is routinely retained for strategic consultation on medical negligence, informed consent, risk mitigation, and crisis management at the clinical practice level.

Steven G. Wigrizer, Esq. Chairman of Medical Malpractice | Saltz Mongeluzzi & Bendesky

In 2017, Mr. Wigrizer served as co-lead counsel with Bob Mongeluzzi in the Philadelphia Salvation Army Thrift Store Collapse trial, which resulted in the historic liability verdict and record-setting settlement. The trial lasted nearly six months, the longest civil trial in Philadelphia history. The $227 million dollar settlement is believed to be the largest in Pennsylvania history.

By way of new litigation and practice areas, Steve recently filed suit on behalf of the City of Coatesville in the groundbreaking Opioid litigation against the manufacturers and distributors of the product. Steve believes that the root cause of the opioid crisis is over prescription, which stems directly from deceptive and misleading information provided to prescribing doctors. At Saltz Mongeluzzi & Bendesky, Steve now serves as the Chairman of the Medical Malpractice group. Recognizing that members of the public are frequently not well informed about their rights and in an effort to provide the community with updated information about the law and topics of general interest, Steve hosts a television show which appears on Main Line TV as well as Phillycam. The show is called The Leading Question and some of the episodes are available on YouTube. His guests include other attorneys, politicians, and judges as well as members of the public. The show is done entirely as a public service.

Finally, Steve is an active board member in an organization known as PeaceDrums USA. The organization promotes peace, understanding, and mutual respect among individuals of diverse religions and backgrounds in the Middle East through the shared experience of music. While much of the work involves fundraising, Steve performs with his band regularly at the organization’s galas. Steve’s band also performs at charity events around the Delaware Valley throughout the year.

I. Initial Case Intake: Separating signal from noise | 2:00-2:10
II. Assessing “Case Strength”: A new approach to an old problem | 2:10-2:20
III. Establishing Departure from the Standard of Care: Pearls and pitfalls | 2:20-2:30
IV. Exploring Causation: Beginning with the end in mind | 2:30-2:40
V. Damages: Avoiding the “dead end” of breach without compensable harm | 2:40-2:50
VI. A Look Inside Common Case Scenarios | 2:50-3:00

VII. Break | 3:00-3:10

VIII. Working with Medical Experts: Maximizing success and avoiding costly mistakes | 3:10-3:20
IX. Winning the Battle of the Experts | 3:20-3:40
X. Expert selection: Credentials, compliance, and telling the story | 3:40-3:50
XI. Ground Rules: Deadlines, deliverables, & cost controls | 3:50-4:00
XII. Proactive Approaches to 3 Common Pitfalls | 4:00-4:10