Medical Malpractice in the Restatement Third of Torts

Michael D. Green is the Bess and Walter Williams Professor of Law at Wake Forest University School of Law. He is a nationally and internationally recognized torts teacher and scholar. In August 2018, he received the ABA's Robert B. McKay Award for outstanding contributions to the field of torts. He has also received the William L. Prosser Award from the AALS and the John G. Fleming Memorial Prize for Torts Scholarship jointly with Professor William C. Powers, Jr., of the University of Texas. Mike served as Co-Reporter for the Restatement Third of Torts: Liability for Physical and Emotional Harm and for Apportionment of Liability with Professor Powers. They were jointly named the R. Ammi Cutter Reporters by the ALI from 2011 to 2015. He currently serves as Reporter for Restatement of the Law Third, Torts: Concluding Provisions.

He is a member of the European Group on Tort Law, which prepared and published Principles of European Tort Law in 2005. He is a founding member and emeritus Executive Committee member of the World Tort Law Society, an organization of torts scholars from Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Mike regularly lectures in Europe, South America, and China. He is a co-author of a leading Torts casebook and of two advanced torts casebooks. He has written dozens of articles in the tort, products liability, and scientific evidence areas. He is also a co-author of the Reference Guide on Epidemiology, contained in the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, a joint publication of the National Academy of Sciences and the Federal Judicial Center. The Guide serves as a reference on scientific disciplines for federal and state court judges.

In addition to his tort and products liability scholarship, he has written extensively about toxic torts and the issues of causation and apportionment that arise in those cases. He has an instrument and commercial pilot's license. Mike received his bachelor’s degree from Tufts University and holds a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He and his wife, Carol, have two sons and a daughter and four grandchildren.

Mark A. Hall is the Fred D. and Elizabeth L. Turnage Professor of Law and Director of Health Law and Policy Program at Wake Forest University School of Law. He is one of the nation's leading scholars in the areas of health care law, public policy, and bioethics. The author or editor of twenty books, including Making Medical Spending Decisions (Oxford University Press), and Health Care Law and Ethics (Aspen), he is currently engaged in research in the areas of health care reform, access to care by the uninsured, and insurance regulation. He currently serves as Associate Reporter for ALI’s Restatement of the Law Third, Torts: Concluding Provisions.

Mark has published scholarship in the law reviews at Berkeley, Chicago, Duke, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Stanford, and his articles have been reprinted in a dozen casebooks and anthologies. He also teaches in the University's Graduate Programs for Bioethics and its MBA program, and he is on the research faculty at the Medical School. Mark regularly consults with government officials, foundations and think tanks about health care public policy issues.

Mark received his bachelor’s degree from Middle Tennessee State University and holds a J.D. from University of Chicago Law School.

Laura Sigman, M.D., J.D., is an Emergency Medicine physician, Director of Legal and Policy Coordination of Emergency Medicine for Children’s National Health System, and Principal and Founder of MD|JD Associates. She excels at providing in-depth analysis and advice on issues that bridge law and medicine.

Dr. Sigman's professional experience includes managing legal and policy issues for a hospital emergency department; conducting investigations of adverse events and malpractice cases and developing preventive risk management strategies; counseling physicians involved in adverse events and malpractice cases; successfully testifying for the passage of health law bills; advising Congressional candidates on health policy; and litigating complex health law cases with the U.S. Department of Justice. Her rigorous training at institutions including Harvard Law School, the University of Chicago Medical School, and Johns Hopkins Hospital is balanced with a collaborative, team-building interpersonal approach.

She speaks frequently on legal and risk management issues relevant to clinicians and on best practices surrounding medical errors and adverse events. Dr. Sigman received her bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College, her J.D. from the Harvard Law School, and her M.D. from the University of Chicago, Pritzker School of Medicine.

Shanin Specter is founding partner of Kline & Specter, P.C. and a one of the premier trial lawyers in the U.S. He has obtained more than 200 jury verdicts and settlements in excess of $1 million and more than 50 case resolutions—16 verdicts—greater than $10 million. Among his verdicts are $153 million against a major automaker and $109 million against an electric power company. Shanin's legal victories have included news making, industry-changing cases involving medical malpractice, defective products, medical devices, premises liability, motor vehicle accidents and general negligence.

Beyond winning substantial monetary compensation for his clients, many of Shanin's cases have prompted changes that provide a societal benefit, including improvements to vehicle safety, nursing and hospital procedures, the safe operation of police cars, training for the use of CPR at public institutions, and inspections, installation and maintenance of utility power lines. The Goretzka case even spurred the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission to create a new Electric Safety Division to investigate reported electrical injuries. Similarly, his lawsuit—plus television appearances calling for action—on behalf of the victims of a fire escape collapse helped move the City of Philadelphia to enact an ordinance requiring all fire escapes to be regularly inspected by an independent structural engineer.

Shanin earned his law degree from the University of Pennsylvania and an LL.M. with First Honors from Cambridge University and has compiled a lengthy record of professional accomplishments and accolades. He is a member of the Inner Circle, a group of the best 100 trial lawyers in the country. He is a member of The American Law Institute. Shanin was featured on the cover of SuperLawyers magazine, in which the independent rating service called him one of the most celebrated and respected catastrophic injury litigators in the country.