{"id":1336,"date":"2019-06-28T12:28:19","date_gmt":"2019-06-28T16:28:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.millerandzois.com\/blog\/?p=1336"},"modified":"2025-07-25T16:38:56","modified_gmt":"2025-07-25T20:38:56","slug":"empty-chair-malpractice-opinion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.millerandzois.com\/blog\/empty-chair-malpractice-opinion\/","title":{"rendered":"New Maryland Case on Blaming a Non-Defendant"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Defense lawyers in love blaming empty chairs.\u00a0 A jury trial is about assigning blame and the easy out for the defense is to get the jury to blame another doctor who is not named at trial.\u00a0 (This is also why plaintiffs&#8217; lawyers get maligned over naming too many defendants &#8212; sometimes there is no choice.)<\/p>\n<p>Usually, the doctor&#8217;s lawyer will not provide expert testimony to blame the doctor.\u00a0 Normally,\u00a0\u00a0the allegation is made indirectly with the hope that the jury blames a non-defendant doctor on their own.<\/p>\n<p>This is a good strategy.\u00a0 Jurors like reaching their own conclusions without getting beat over the head and most malpractice defense lawyers do not blame the empty chair directly for fear of running afoul of Maryland law.<\/p>\n<div class=\"read_more_link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.millerandzois.com\/blog\/empty-chair-malpractice-opinion\/\"  title=\"Continue Reading New Maryland Case on Blaming a Non-Defendant\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Defense lawyers in love blaming empty chairs.\u00a0 A jury trial is about assigning blame and the easy out for the defense is to get the jury to blame another doctor who is not named at trial.\u00a0 (This is also why plaintiffs&#8217; lawyers get maligned over naming too many defendants &#8212; sometimes there is no choice.) [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-medical-malpractice"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Empty Chair Defense Gets Rules: Reiss v. American Radiology<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A Maryland appellate court opinion that requires malpractice defense lawyers to offer expert testimony if they want to blame another doctor.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.millerandzois.com\/blog\/empty-chair-malpractice-opinion\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Empty Chair Defense Gets Rules: Reiss v. American Radiology\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"A Maryland appellate court opinion that requires malpractice defense lawyers to offer expert testimony if they want to blame another doctor.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Ronald V. Miller, Jr.\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Empty Chair Defense Gets Rules: Reiss v. American Radiology","description":"A Maryland appellate court opinion that requires malpractice defense lawyers to offer expert testimony if they want to blame another doctor.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.millerandzois.com\/blog\/empty-chair-malpractice-opinion\/","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_title":"Empty Chair Defense Gets Rules: Reiss v. American Radiology","twitter_description":"A Maryland appellate court opinion that requires malpractice defense lawyers to offer expert testimony if they want to blame another doctor.","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Ronald V. 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