DAMAGES

by Barry Werth

Overview

Damages is the riveting true story of one family’s legal struggles in the world of medicine. At the urging of a friend, the Sabias filed a medical malpractice lawsuit against Dr. Humes and Norwalk Hospital. Barry Werth takes us through the seven-year lawsuit, allowing us to see the legal strategy plotted by the Sabias’s attorneys, Connecticut’s premier medical malpractice law firm.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781416594918
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	02/22/2008
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Barry Werth is an award-winning journalist and the acclaimed author of seven books. His landmark first book, The Billion-Dollar Molecule, recounts the founding and early struggles of a start-up pharmaceutical company. Werth’s articles have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and GQ, among others. He has taught journalism and nonfiction writing at Smith, Mount Holyoke, and Boston University. He lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Editorial Reviews

This is a great book and not just for doctors and lawyers. Anyone who enjoyed Jonathan Harr's A Civil Action will enjoy Damages. I was left wondering what sort of system could be devised that would serve the needs of parents faced with catastrophic loss, prevent substandard care, and protect doctors who are unjustly sued.

Journal of the American Medical Association

For readers steeped in the literature of medical malpractice, this excellent, well-written book takes a novel, insightful, and humane approach....Unlike so many works on the subject of medicine and the law, this book neither exalts nor demonizes the lawyers and physicians who were cast as opponents by circumstances and events.

New England Journal of Medicine

Werth (The Billion Dollar Molecule, LJ 2/1/94) integrates the story of one family's travails after the birth of a profoundly disabled son with an unbiased view of medical and legal issues. Werth reviewed files and interviewed most of the people involved in the medical malpractice case brought by the parents of Tony John Sabio. This meticulous, even-handed approach results in a book that is both an engrossing look at the experiences of one family and a serious glimpse into the American medical malpractice industry. It also touches on the serious question of whether, given the competing interests involved, a medical malpractice suit can be an effective tool to discover the truth or achieve justice. This is the book that Jonathan Harr's A Civil Action (LJ 9/15/95) aspired to be but was not because Harr did not put that particular lawsuit into the larger context. Recommended for any library where medical and/or legal true stories are in demand.Suzanne Pierce Dyer, Alameda Cty. Law Lib., Oakland, Cal.

Library Journal