Loftus v. Hayden’s Empirical Analysis
1978
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 2 district · 13 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 18 later decisions — most recently July 2004
2 federal appellate · 2 district · 13 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on Raitt v. Johns Hopkins Hospital · Peters v. Gelb · Peters v. Gelb · Loftus v. Hayden
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 18 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“(a) No person shall be competent to give expert medical testimony as to applicable standards of skill and care unless such person is familiar with that degree of skill ordinarily employed in the community or locality where the alleged malpractice occurred, under similar circumstances, by members of the profession practiced by the health care provider; provided, however, that any such expert witness need not be licensed in the State. (b) Any physician who has been in the active practice of medicine or surgery for at least the past 5 years and who currently practices in the State or within a State contiguous to the State and within a radius of 75 miles of the Capitol of the State shall be presumed to be competent to give expert medical testimony as to applicable standards of skill and care, if it shall be established that the degree of skill and care required of the expert in the locality where the expert practices or teaches is of the same or equivalent standard as the skill and care employed in the community or locality where the alleged malpractice occurred.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage“[T]he “familiar requirement of § 6854 means having more than a fair knowledge of the skill ordinarily employed in the community in question. We think that a witness offered to give “expert medical testimony” should establish that he “knows” what degree of skill is ordinarily employed here and that he is well acquainted or thoroughly conversant with it. * * * * * * When a Trial Court must determine whether a medical expert has the requisite credentials under § 6854, all relevant factors must be considered and balanced before a ruling is made. The witness should be permitted to show that he acquired the necessary “familiarity” in multi-various ways; for example, by: 1) direct observation in Delaware; 2) study in Delaware (as a medical student on rotation, as an intern or as a resident) (citation omitted); 3) care of Delaware patients referred by Delaware physicians; 4) teaching of students who have dispersed to Delaware; 5) readings of Delaware medical records, reports, journals, and the like; 6) consultations with Delaware physicians; 7) attendance at meetings with Delaware doctors.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.