Episode # 40 • 15 Jun 2026
Know Your Opponent: Trends in Plaintiff's Attorney Tactics
with Heather Hansen, Dr. Gita Pensa
Trial consultant and communications expert Heather Hansen returns to the podcast to talk about knowing your opponent: what plaintiff's attorneys are doing, why they're doing it, and how unprepared physicians can get stuck in sticky traps, even when their medicine was good. Plaintiff's attorneys publicly teach their newest tactics to one another as a matter of furthering their business interests -- and now you can understand what they're doing as well.
Resources
- Heather Hansen created The Prepared Expert course to help ethical expert witnesses communicate with confidence, credibility, and composure under pressure.
- Malpractice Liability and Health Care Quality: A Review — JAMA, 2020
- US Chamber of Commerce Tort Costs in America
- Heather Hansen's previous appearance: The Blame Game: Finger Pointing in Charting and Litigation
- Compassionomics
- Trial Guides
- Reptile: The 2009 Manual of the Plantiff's Revolution by David Ball and Don Keenan is out of print, but you can find old copies on eBay or Amazon.
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More about this episode
Litigation in the U.S. is an enormous business sector. Tort costs exceeded $529 billion in 2022, rising at 7.1% annually between 2016 and 2022, outpacing both inflation and GDP growth. Medical malpractice litigation is part of this machine. The burden gets passed back to American households through higher premiums, defensive medicine, and reduced resources for care.
Your opponent in litigation is not the plaintiff. It's the plaintiff's attorney, who is part of this industry -- and you are what stands between them and, potentially, millions of dollars.
So doesn't it make sense that they will try any tactic available to them to win--even if they know, deep down, that your care was reasonable?
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