Patrick Salvi II

1. Case intake
   1. Overall thoughts on case intake
   2. Approach to specific cases (e.g., surgical error, delayed cancer diagnosis, emergency room, birth injury, vascular)
   3. Efficiently deciding what cases to obtain records, get expert review, and file
2. Assembling your experts
   1. Which experts do you need?
   2. Where to find them
   3. How to best engage the experts and communicate with the experts
   4. Difficult to find experts
3. Complaint drafting
   1. Naming defendants to prevent empty chairs
   2. Maximizing collectability
   3. Drafting the complaint to ensure relation back in the future
   4. Institutional negligence
4. Maximizing your evidence through discovery
   1. Obtaining important discovery outside the medical records – policies and procedures, communications not in the records, insurance policies
   2. Audit trail discovery
   3. Depositions – defendant doctors/nurses, treating physicians, plaintiff experts, defense experts
   4. Literature – good literature to support your case
5. Trial preparation
   1. MILs
   2. Demonstrative exhibits – education of medical concepts, right way wrong way, effective timelines
   3. Order of witnesses
   4. High tech, low tech – using flip charts, models, and animations
6. Voir dire (see attached – Housen 76M birth injury, Fern 32M vascular case, foot off, Florez 50M birth injury)
   1. Deselecting bad med mal jurors
   2. Doctors are just like the rest of us
   3. Who has courage?
   4. No such thing as “poisoning the well” (with a couple exceptions)
7. Adverse examination of the Defendant (see attached – Housen obstetrician, Fern family practice, Bagga general surgeon)
   1. Kill shots
   2. No oxygen
   3. 80/20 rule
8. Direct of the Plaintiff’s expert
   1. ABC – always be closing
   2. Locking in your proofs
   3. Dos and don’ts – prepping the witness to be his or her best
9. Cross of defense experts
   1. Using literature
   2. Using evidence at trial
   3. Focus on the facts
   4. Credibility and impressions
10. Closing and rebuttal (see attached Housen/Fern/Florez)
    1. Lowering the burden
    2. Boiling the complex down to its essence
    3. Connecting with jurors
    4. Predicting defendant’s closing – being armed for rebuttal