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Certificate of Merit Laws

BY Janice G. Inman
November 25, 2009

State legislatures have been grappling for years with calls from the medical community for medical malpractice reforms aimed at reining in the costs of practicing medicine. It is argued that the costs of obtaining medical malpractice insurance coverage and defending spurious medical malpractice claims make practicing medicine too costly for practitioners, so legislatures have tried a number of ways to persuade medical practitioners that their states are more practitioner-friendly. These include venue-shopping curbs and caps on non-economic damages recoverable through medical malpractice suits.

Certificate of Merit

Another popular way states have encouraged doctors and other health care providers to practice within their borders is by stopping medical malpractice claims in their early stages by requiring the filing of a certificate of merit before a case can proceed. The certificate of merit generally must include a declaration by the plaintiff's attorney that he or she believes the care the plaintiff received fell below the standard of care and caused the plaintiff's injuries, oftentimes along with a similar declaration made by at least one medical expert who has reviewed the plaintiff's medical records.

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