CMG Law has represented patients and families in medical malpractice cases since 1981. Our litigation team focuses exclusively on cases involving wrongful death, catastrophic injury, and permanent disability. We bring trial experience in complex medical cases and work closely with our clients throughout the process. Contact us for a free consultation to discuss whether we are the right attorneys for your case.
Anywhere in Washington State. Although our office is in Seattle, we help injured patients all over the State of Washington and beyond. This includes places like Bellevue, Redmond, Lynnwood, Tacoma, Bellingham, Everett, Spokane, Yakima, the Tri-Cities, and Vancouver. Whether you are in Whatcom County or Clark County, Grays Harbor or Spokane County, we represent victims and families all over the state. We also represent out-of-state patients injured by medical care in Washington state.
We limit our practice to medical negligence claims, period. We handle claims involving birth injuries, brain and spinal cord injuries, anesthesia errors, wrong-site surgery, and other surgical mistakes. We also represent patients harmed by delayed diagnoses, hospital negligence, and failures to monitor or treat serious conditions. Our cases include medical negligence resulting in wrongful death, catastrophic injury, or permanent disability. If you believe negligent medical care harmed you or a loved one, we can help evaluate what happened and whether you have a claim.
Here are a few of the practice areas in which we most often represent injured patients.
More About CMG LAWMost medical malpractice claims are complex, expensive, and risky, and many lawyers do not handle them. CMG Law, which was founded in 1980, limits its practice to such cases. The CMG Law team has decades of experience in prosecuting medical malpractice cases. Our lawyers have successfully resolved cases ranging from birth injuries to wrongful death. Case reports of some of the cases we have handled over the years can be seen in the “Cases We Handle” part of this website.
Who is operating on you during a cesarean birth? At teaching hospitals, the answer often includes a resident physician. A new study suggests that involvement
Software may decide how many nurses care for you tonight. Nurses are pushing back. Staffing is a patient safety issue. When a unit has too
A hospital doesn’t just have to provide good care once a patient walks in. It has to be reachable in the first place. Distance is
We have been told for decades that hospital mergers are good for the consumer. That larger systems can leverage their scale to negotiate better prices
Sepsis in children rarely announces itself. A fever, fast breathing, a child who seems “just off” — these signs can mimic a dozen ordinary illnesses.
Imagine two identical twins — same DNA, same upbringing, same everything on paper. Somehow, only one develops cancer. Geneticists don’t have a clean answer for
Medical malpractice cases require careful investigation and a clear explanation of complex medical evidence. We work with medical experts from across the country to evaluate the care provided, determine whether negligence caused harm, and assess the consequences for our clients. Our attorneys bring experience taking complex medical cases to trial and preparing the evidence needed to present them to a judge or jury.
You deserve to understand what is happening in your case. Our attorneys and staff explain the medical and legal issues, keep you informed as the case progresses, and discuss the choices you face. We work closely with you so that you can make informed decisions about settlement and trial.
1. Preliminary EvaluationAn attorney in our office will make a preliminary assessment of your claim, based on information provided to us by you or a referring lawyer. Often, for various reasons, a decision is made at this stage not to proceed further with a claim. Those reasons may include a potential conflict of interest — for example where the potential defendant in your claim is a doctor for other clients or is an expert witness in one of our cases — or the provable damages are not extensive enough to justify the risks and costs of pursuing the claim.
Establishing liability or fault depends, in most cases, on what is in the medical records. In the second stage of the evaluation process, we will send for copies of the relevant records. It may take as long as four weeks or more to obtain them.
The initial review of the records will be done by an attorney in our office. Depending on the volume of records and the complexity of the case, the review may take several weeks to complete. One of our attorneys specializes in such reviews and prepares extensive chronologies of the care in question.
The next stage is evaluation by an appropriate expert doctor. Usually, the issue of negligence must be evaluated by someone in the same field, i.e., a surgeon for surgical negligence, a nurse for nursing negligence, etc.
Sometimes, issues other than that of negligence must also be evaluated by an expert. For example, a different expert may be used to evaluate causation (whether and to what extent the negligence caused injury to the patient) or the extent of damages.
We work with many medical experts who have evaluated potential claims and testified in our cases, but in some instances we need to locate a particular expert with whom we have not previously worked on a case. This may involve contacting experts from different areas of the country who have written articles about the particular medical subject in Washington State.
We determine on the basis of our review process whether to proceed with the claim. Reasons for not proceeding may be problems in proving negligence, causation, or damages. Because of the complexity and cost of handling medical negligence cases, there must be a weighing of the risks and costs of pursuing a claim against the potential recovery from a settlement or verdict.
If the initial review indicates that this is a case which we would want to pursue, we will enter into a formal attorney-client relationship under the terms in a written retainer agreement providing for a contingent (percentage) fee. There is no fee if there is no recovery, and we advance the costs of the lawsuit (to be reimbursed at the time of resolution).
