Jay Page

Medical malpractice claims fall to 14 year low in Pennsylvania, a lesson for South Africa

By Jay Page and Samantha Copeman on June 4, 2015 Posted in Insurance

Unlike in Pennsylvania, our courts do not require a plaintiff to produce a certificate of merit as a prerequisite for instituting medical malpractice claims. The certificate of merit is designed to confirm that the medical procedures in a case fall outside acceptable standards. When the requirement was introduced in Pennsylvania in 2003, the number of … Continue reading

Capping of medmal claims – a look at Missouri’s proposed scheme

By Jay Page on May 25, 2015 Posted in Insurance

The system proposed in Missouri, which allows for an adjustment of the cap depending on the severity of the injury, may represent an attractive option should some form of capping be introduced in South Africa. There is already an existing body of expertise and precedent for assessing the severity of injuries which has sprung up … Continue reading

Joan Rivers’ daughter claims compensation after alleged medical malpractice: wrongful death actions

By Jay Page and Yasin Chetty on February 4, 2015 Posted in Insurance

Melissa Rivers, the daughter of the late Fashion Police star, Joan Rivers, is reportedly instituting a wrongful death claim against the medical practitioners who treated her mom prior to her death in September 2014. A wrongful death claim can be instituted in South Africa based on negligence which results in death, although this is not … Continue reading

Obligation to make full and proper disclosure reaffirmed and an interesting, but misguided estoppel argument rejected

By Jay Page on December 10, 2014 Posted in Insurance

In Regent Insurance v King’s Property Development the appeal court confirmed that when dealing with avoidance of a policy for material non-disclosure: The test for materiality is objective taken from the view of the reasonable person in the insurer’s position. The test for inducement is subjective taken from the view of the particular insurer. The … Continue reading

Nothing special about “Res ipsa loquitur” (the facts speak for themselves)

By Jay Page on December 1, 2014 Posted in Insurance

The supreme court of appeal has endorsed calls to jettison the term res ipsa loquitor (the thing speaks for itself) completely from our law. The court remarked that res ipsa loquitur is not a legal rule, is misleading and is unnecessary. Res ipsa loquitur has for some time been championed by plaintiff attorneys in medico-legal … Continue reading

Defamation in the Twitterverse

By Jay Page and Lauren Coetzee on March 28, 2014 Posted in General

Social media is not immune to defamation laws. More and more, courts locally and around the world have come to the aid of those who are the subject of defamatory statements made on Twitter and Facebook. The danger of social media is that it’s so easy to tweet before you think. To avoid getting caught … Continue reading