There are few topics that will infuriate a plaintiff’s medical malpractice lawyer more than Judiciary Law §474-a. That is the statute that restricts the legal fee to a sliding scale, which starts at 30 percent of the first $250,000 recovered and diminishes from there, in roughly $250,000 increments, to a maximum of 10 percent of any recovery over $1.25 million.1 Legislative bills calling for its repeal have been introduced in every session of the Legislature since 1994. The current effort is Senate Bill S554.
It’s not difficult to see their point. Medical malpractice cases are complex, expensive and difficult to win. While their colleagues in other areas of the personal injury bar might take one-third of the net recovery on less difficult cases, the recovery on, say a $1.5 million medical malpractice award, without first subtracting expenses (and there are always expensesvery high expenses) is $299,500, or roughly 20 percent. And on higher recoveries the fee, as a percentage of the award, will drop significantly from there.
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