Firm News & Events
2016
March 2016: Patrick Malone’s book, The Fearless Cross-Examiner, is published
The Fearless Cross-Examiner is Malone’s third book on trial advocacy published by Trial Guides. Early reviewers say: “This is the finest book on cross-examination I have ever read,” and, “Blows the doors off of everything I’ve ever read on the art and science of cross examination,” and a lot more along similar lines. Malone has also set up a page on this website with annotated examples of good cross-examination transcripts from excellent lawyers, with comments about how and why they’re effective. Click here to go to that page.
March 2016: New article is published on why the Affordable Care Act should not be used as a weapon to reduce plaintiffs’ damages in personal injury cases.
Patrick Malone co-authored the piece in Annals of Health Law with law professors Max Mehlman and Charles Silver, and lawyers and consumer advocates Jay Angoff and Peter Weinberger. The article argues that there are strong policy and legal reasons for rejecting defense efforts to contend that future medical care for injured people will be covered by insurance issued under the Affordable Care Act and therefore should not be compensated by those whose negligence caused the injuries. The law should not let tortfeasors shift the financial responsibility for the injuries they caused in this way.
May 2016: Patrick Malone co-authors a paper on why the Affordable Care Act does not give defendants a way to reduce damages for future medical care.
Readers can download “COMPENSATING PERSONS INJURED BY MEDICAL MALPRACTICE AND OTHER TORTIOUS BEHAVIOR FOR FUTURE MEDICAL EXPENSES UNDER THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT” from the SSRN website here. The paper was published in the Annals of Health Law.
May 2016:Patrick Malone describes his experiences as a longtime volunteer lawyer at the DC Bar pro bono clinic, in this article in the Washington Lawyer.
Readers can view the article here.
2015
January 2015: Malone launches seminar series on Rules of the Road.
He spoke to a packed room of trial lawyers at the first monthly session, which provided an overview of the Rules of the Road technique popularized by the book of the same name which Malone co-authored with Rick Friedman. For more on the “Rules of the Road” technique and books, see the publisher’s website: https://www.trialguides.com/book/rules-of-the-road/ Session two of the series covers depositions, with an in-depth focus on Rule 30(b)(6) depositions, with guest speaker Mark Kosieradzki from Minneapolis. Mark is the leading plaintiff lawyer in the country on use of 30b6 depositions in cases against large and small corporations for nursing home neglect and abuse, premises liability, defective products, and other cases.
Malone’s monthly talks continued through June 2015. They are now available from Trialguides.com with the title, “Rules of the Road: Roadmap to a Winning System.” Viewers can get the entire set or can watch individual talks in the six-part series.
2014
June 2014: New article by Malone discusses importance of non-monetary results in lawsuits.
Malone’s article in Trial magazine, “Paying It Forward by Pressing for Safety Changes” (Trial, June 2014) collects real cases where attorneys with determination and persistence have won safety rule changes, better instructions on products, apologies and other non-monetary outcomes in civil lawsuits representing injured clients. More results like these were collected by Malone for the Inner Circle of Advocates — see its “Living Justice” page. The Inner Circle is an invitation-only society of top lawyers to which Malone belongs.
June 2014: Malone to speak to lawyer groups on new techniques for winning cases.
Invited talks include the National Employment Lawyers Association in Boston and state trial lawyer groups in Missouri and West Virginia. Earlier talks in 2014 were given to trial lawyer groups in Florida and the District of Columbia.
April 2014: Aaron M. Levine has joined the Malone firm as “Of Counsel.”
Mr. Levine brings 50-plus years of experience representing injured people in complex lawsuits against drug manufacturers. He continues to head his own firm while working with the lawyers at Patrick Malone & Associates.
April 2014: Patrick Malone heads trial lawyers charity.
Malone is the new president of Metropolitan Washington D.C. Trial Lawyers Foundation, the charitable arm of the D.C. Trial Lawyers Association. The foundation donates to organizations that work to make the community safer for children and to enrich kids’ lives. A new project is supporting the Washington, D.C. city high school debate championship.
2013
July 2013: Malone speaks at judges’ forum.
The annual forum of the Pound Institute, held in San Francisco, featured several talks on the role of popular opinion in judicial decision making. Malone gave a “comment” response advocating against any such deference to “the people’s will” in deciding cases.
July 2013: Al Clarke joins firm.
Clarke brings years of experience on the defense side in serious injury lawsuits. He grew up in Washington, D.C. and lives with his family in northern Virginia.
June 2013: Malone joins board of Catholic Disability Foundation.
The foundation raises money for its sister organization, the National Catholic Partnership on Disability. NCPD’s mission is the full inclusion of people with disabilities in the Church and society. This mission is rooted in the Gospel values affirming the dignity of every individual no matter how disabled.
March 2013: National conference for lawyers on medical malpractice is headed by Patrick Malone.
The program, “Winning Medical Negligence Cases with Rules of the Road Featuring Patrick Malone,” took place in Scottsdale, Arizona, and featured as faculty some of the most successful plaintiffs’ attorneys in this field throughout the United States. It was sponsored by the American Association for Justice.
2012
June 2012: Verdict against GEICO for insurance “bad faith.”
Hilda and Francisco Rivas, represented by Patrick Malone, won a jury verdict in District of Columbia Superior Court against the GEICO insurance company for its failure to protect the Rivases, who were GEICO policy holders, from a lawsuit that wiped out their life savings. The jury found that GEICO put its own interests ahead of the Rivases, which is contrary to the duty of insurance companies.
May 2012: Verdict for injured child in malpractice case in Virginia.
Marissa Simpson suffered serious injuries to her brain and kidneys just before birth because of undetected bleeding in the womb, due to an amniocentesis needle that hit one of the baby’s blood vessels, causing her to lose half her blood volume by the time she was delivered. A Roanoke, Virginia jury returned a verdict for Marissa of $7 million and for her mother Marsha Simpson for $2 million. The money will pay for Marissa’s lifelong care. Patrick Malone was lead counsel for the Simpson family at trial, along with Roanoke attorney Jeff Krasnow.
March 2012: New book by Patrick Malone is published.
Winning Medical Malpractice Cases with the Rules of the Road Technique is an outgrowth of Malone’s previous book with Rick Friedman on how to win all types of complex serious injury cases with the “rules of the road.” The new book is also published by Trial Guides, a leading publisher of books and educational videos for plaintiffs’ lawyers.
2011
July 2011: Two important new wins in the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.
The decisions came down on the same day in unrelated cases prosecuted by Patrick Malone & Associates for two malpractice victims. One case established the right of an injured malpractice plaintiff to take over a settling defendant’s cross-claim against another defendant who insists on trial. (In this case, the settlement was with an anesthesiologist, and the trial was against a general surgeon, both of whom combined to cause the patient’s injury with a poorly chosen drug.) The other case set new law on how interest is calculated on an unpaid judgment (resulting in this case in an additional $200,000 payment to Malone’s client). More details can be read on our patient safety blog.
July 2011: Malone elected to AAJ Board of Governors.
The American Association for Justice is the nation’s leading organization of lawyers representing injured people. Mr. Malone was elected as a representative from the District of Columbia to the AAJ Board of Governors, which manages the AAJ.
April 2011: Malone speaks to bar groups across the country.
Invited speeches included the California consumer attorneys, the DC area employment lawyers, and trial lawyer organizations in Iowa, Arkansas and New Jersey.
2010
September 2010: Trial magazine publishes new article on the ethics of secret settlements.
Malone and his co-author Jon Bauer argue that most of the time, these agreements are unethical because they hide witnesses and evidence, and they prevent the public from learning who the most qualified lawyers are to represent them. Read the article here.
July 2010: Malone speaks at national convention of plaintiff lawyers in Vancouver.
Malone’s topics at the AAJ annual convention included proving subtle brain injury in a child and the ethics of secret settlements.
July 2010: New edition of leading advocacy book is published.
Since it was first published in 2006, the book by Rick Friedman and Patrick Malone, “Rules of the Road: A Plaintiff Lawyer’s Guide to Proving Liability,” has become a best seller in the world of trial lawyers. Patrick Malone regularly teaches the book’s proven techniques at lawyer conferences all over the United States. The second edition has already been widely praised by leading plaintiff lawyers. As one said: “It’s hard to improve on a masterpiece, but Rick Friedman and Pat Malone did it again.” (Don Keenan.) And jury consultant David Ball calls the second edition “among the most necessary trial advocacy books ever written.” Read more at the publisher’s web site here.
May 2010: U.S. drops its appeal in Burton v. United States
The United States government dropped its appeal of a nearly $2.1 million judgment won against it by Patrick Malone & Associates in a medical malpractice suit against Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The government paid the entire judgment to Malone’s client. Read more about Burton v. United States here.
February 2010: Malone addresses national group of executives of brain injury rehabilitation facilities.
His talk to the national meeting concerned how leaders can become more persuasive by remembering the three fundamentals of the art of rhetoric first described by Aristotle: ethos, pathos and logos.
2009
December 2009: Malone speaks to training course for judges.
His talk to the “Civil Division” judges of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia was given by the invitation of the judges to bring them up to date on new developments in the law.
July 2009: Book for health care consumers by Patrick Malone is published.
The book is The Life You Save: Nine Steps to Finding the Best Medical Care — and Avoiding the Worst, (DaCapo Lifelong Press). The book is filled with lifesaving advice for patients, based on Malone’s three decades as a patient advocate. It can be ordered from Amazon by clicking here. Read reviews of the book here and Chapter One here.
April 2009: Malone firm wins big victory for Maryland consumers.
A Maryland judge has ruled that the state’s damages “cap” does not apply to medical malpractice victims, a potential precedent for many other cases where victims’ relief is unfairly limited by the arbitrary legislative “cap.” Read details in Maryland Daily Record here.
2008
December 2008: Malone speaks to judges’ and lawyers’ meetings on developments in the law.
In the fall of 2008, Patrick Malone gave invited talks to a group of judges in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia (part of an annual training program focusing on new developments in the law), and to lawyers’ groups in Richmond (a brain injury conference), Cleveland (Ohio Association for Justice) and Las Vegas, Nevada. The Las Vegas talk was part of a national weekend forum on Malone’s book, Rules of the Road.
October 2008: Patrick Malone is named to the Lawdragon 500 Leading Lawyers in America.
According to Lawdragon, its list of 500 leading lawyers, out of one million lawyers in the United States, was compiled from nearly 10,000 nominations from law firms, voting in an online ballot, and research by Lawdragon’s editorial staff. See the list here.
September 2008: ABA publishes Malone article on Lincoln’s greatest speech.
Malone’s article, “Lessons for Trial Lawyers from Lincoln’s Second Inaugural,” appears in the Summer 2008 edition of Litigation, published by the Litigation Section of the American Bar Association. Read a reprint here.
August 2008: Malone is interviewed on “Champions of Justice” radio show.
The show’s host is Tom Girardi, a top Los Angeles attorney with the firm of Girardi and Keese. The wide-ranging interview covered Malone’s article on Lincoln, his law practice and other topics.
July 15, 2008: Patrick Malone speaks to American Association for Justice annual convention.
Malone gave two invited lectures at the national meeting of trial lawyers in Philadelphia. The first was to the “Advocacy Track” meeting and the second to the “professional negligence” section. The talks covered different aspects of the Rules of the Road book that he co-authored with Rick Friedman.
May 1, 2008: Patrick Malone speaks to New Jersey trial lawyers.
The annual Boardwalk seminar of ATLA-New Jersey featured Patrick Malone lecturing about the Rules of the Road.
March 28, 2008: Patrick A. Malone inducted as a fellow of the International Academy of Trial Lawyers.
The IATL (www.iatl.net) is an invitation-only honorary society limited to 500 fellows from both the plaintiff’s and defense bar. Its mission is to promote the Rule of Law around the world and to elevate standards of integrity, honesty and courtesy in the legal profession.
2007
December 7, 2007: Patrick Malone spoke to a judges training session
Patrick Malone spoke to a judges training session for civil division judges in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, at the invitation of the chief of the division. This is an annual program where Malone has spoken for the last several years on the topic of recent decisions from the Court of Appeals, focusing on trial court reversals and how to avoid getting reversed.
October 19, 2007: Patrick Malone continues busy schedule speaking to attorney groups
Patrick Malone’s recent talks to attorneys include: the Etheridge Society, Charlottesville, Virginia, October 5, 2007 … the American Association for Justice, Atlanta, Georgia, September 15-16, 2007. This weekend seminar on the Rules of the Road book drew nearly 200 attorneys from across the country … Inner Circle of Advocates, Boston, August 5, 2007. Malone spoke on “What Trial Lawyers Can Learn from Lincoln’s Greatest Speech, the Second Inaugural.”
October 12, 2007: Patrick Malone book now available in audio
The popular legal book co-authored by Rick Friedman and Patrick Malone, Rules of the Road: A Plaintiff Lawyer’s Guide to Proving Liability, has now been released in an audio-book CD by the publisher. The book was recorded in a professional studio with the two authors speaking. More information is at: https://trialguides.com/roadrulesaudio.htm.
October 1, 2007: Patrick Malone launches new law firm
Patrick Malone & Associates, P.C. opened its doors in October 2007, continuing to represent clients with catastrophic injuries, the same law specialty in which Patrick Malone has developed a national reputation over the last two decades. Malone was previously a partner at Stein, Mitchell & Mezines. His first law partner at the new firm is Leonard Dooren, who has 13 years experience in medical malpractice defense work representing doctors and hospitals. Dooren will represent exclusively patients in his new practice with Malone & Associates.
March 2010: Malone leads national course on the ethics of secret settlements.
The secrecy provisions in settlement agreements are bad for the public and bad for the administration of justice, plus they are often unethical, and so lawyers for consumers should resist them, Malone argued in a national teleseminar sponsored by the American Association for Justice.