FEATURE Following enactment of legislation requiring litigation to be venued in the county in which the alleged malpractice occurred, both the total number of cases filed and the percentage of total cases filed in Philadelphia County declined. The percentage of all cases filed in Philadelphia dropped from 44% in 2000-2002 to 29% in subsequent years (Figure 1). As is the case nationally, a very small percentage of cases are decided at trial. Of the total of 32,195 medical malpractice cases filed in Pennsylvania between 2000-2017, only 3,507 or 10.9% were decided at a jury trial. Table 2: Trials and Outcomes Jan 2000- Jul 2003 Annualized 1/2000-7/2003 Jul 2003- Dec 2004 Annualized 7/2003-12/2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 Totals 2000-2017 PA State Total Trials 1144 326.9 449 299 223 230 185 161 154 164 110 135 110 128 102 110 102 3507 PA Total Defense Verdicts 835 238.6 352 235 179 191 153 131 131 133 78 106 85 105 80 93 81 2733 PA Total Plaintiff Verdicts 309 88.3 97 65 44 39 32 30 23 31 32 29 25 23 22 17 21 774 Philadelphia Trials 407 116.3 181 121 56 46 37 31 42 34 25 27 20 18 21 16 21 982 Philadelphia Defense Verdicts 241 68.9 123 82 35 33 27 21 33 26 14 14 11 12 13 11 13 627 Philadelphia Plaintiff Verdicts 166 47.4 58 39 21 13 10 10 8 355 Defense verdicts outside Philadelphia 594 169.7 229 153 144 158 126 110 98 107 64 92 74 93 67 82 68 2106 Plaintiff verdicts outside Philadelphia 143 40.9 39 26 23 26 22 20 14 23 21 16 16 17 14 12 13 419 *Divided by 3.5 *Divided by 1.5 The disposition of cases decided by jury trial is seen in Table 2. 20 Lehigh County Health & Medicine | SUMMER 2019 9 8 11 13 9 6 8 5