Profile: Michael P. Koskoff: Med Mal 101

“It’s the clamp, stupid!”

That was Michael P. Koskoff’s mantra while he worked on a complex lawsuit that resulted in Connecticut’s highest medical-malpractice verdict to date.

A jury in March awarded the record $27 million to the parents of William “Billy” Jacobs of Wappingers Falls, N.Y. Jacobs was seriously injured in a 1986 auto accident that claimed three lives. He was taken to Yale-New Haven Hospital where, according to Koskoff, his aorta was punctured with a clamp during surgery that never should have been performed. (For more information, see the March 8 story in The Connecticut Law Tribune.) Koskoff contends the incident rendered Jacobs, then 17, blind and brain-damaged.

In an interview with The Frankenfeld Report, Koskoff called the verdict “reasonable.” The bulk of the award, some $20 million, is for past and future economic losses that will include around-the-clock custodial care. The rest is for pain and suffering and loss of life’s enjoyment.

The hospital is seeking to have the verdict set aside. It also is appealing a $12.2 million award Koskoff won in 1997 for a hospital resident who was stuck with an HIV-infected needle.

Koskoff, 56, has devoted his career to medical-malpractice cases. “They can tend to overwhelm you if you don’t master them,” he said, “and the only way to master them is to reduce them to their simplest denominator. In other words, be able to state in very simple terms and very direct terms what was done wrong.”

In presenting the Jacobs case, he said, he had to keep taking his own advice. “I had notes to myself all over the place saying, ‘It’s the clamp, stupid!’ When all was said and done, they did in fact puncture a hole in his aorta with a clamp, and they weren’t supposed to do that. It wasn’t part of the operative plan.”

Readers of Barry Werth’s widely praised book Damages: One Family’s Legal Struggles in the World of Medicine will recognize Koskoff as the plaintiff’s lawyer. And watchers of Court TV might remember his past appearances as a commentator.

Koskoff is the only Connecticut member of the Inner Circle of Advocates, an invitation-only society of 100 lawyers. He has been chairman of the Connecticut Trial Lawyers Association’s Continuing Legal Education Committee for more than a decade.

A lifelong Connecticut resident, Koskoff graduated from the University of Connecticut School of Law. He is senior partner at Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder in Bridgeport. He and his wife, Rosalind, also an attorney, have four grown children, two of whom are lawyers. When not practicing law, Koskoff enjoys international travel, concerts and theater performances, working out and playing tennis.

Contact Michael P. Koskoff at
Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder, P.C.
350 Fairfield Ave., Fifth Floor
Bridgeport, Conn. 06604
Phone: (203) 336-4421, Fax: (203) 368-3244
E-mail: mkoskoff@koskoff.com