Kristin L. Hiscutt

Kristin L. Hiscutt is an associate attorney in the firm. She received her law degree from the Charleston School of Law in Charleston, South Carolina, where she founded the Health Law & Bioethics Society and served as its President, creating the law school’s annual Bioethics Symposium. Kristin also served as a member of the Moot Court Board and the Charleston Law Review, and she worked with the Medical University of South Carolina to establish a collaborative teaching relationship between the medical school and the law school.

Kristin received her undergraduate degree in Health Law & Bioethics from Davidson College, where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa. While at Davidson, Kristin co-founded Davidson’s Bioethics Society and started The Ethical View, a bioethics publication of the Medical Humanities Department. She served on Davidson’s Medical Humanities Advisory Council to Ethics Committees and its Human Subjects Institutional Review Board. She also sat on the Ethics Committee at Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, North Carolina as a consultant and conducted an extensive two-year clinical internship in the Level 1 hospital’s Trauma Intensive Care Unit and Emergency Department.

Prior to joining the firm, Kristin served as Trauma & Risk Management Research Specialist at Lake Norman Regional Medical Center in North Carolina and then as Research Coordinator at Emory University School of Medicine, where she conducted neurosurgery research on traumatically brain-injured patients at Grady Memorial Hospital under then–Chief of Neurosurgery, Dr. Odette Harris.

Kristin was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and moved to Atlanta in 1996. She enjoys running and cooking Louisiana Cajun and Creole favorites, like gumbo, jambalaya, and etouffé.

PRACTICE GROUPS

Professional Negligence / Medical Malpractice
Kristin represents hospitals, physician, nurses, and other allied health care professionals in medical malpractice and intentional tort lawsuits, as well as in pre-litigation medical malpractice matters.

Kristin represents hospitals and Labor & Delivery nurses in birth trauma litigation involving claims of improper interpretation of electronic fetal monitoring strips and failure to invoke the chain of command to ensure Cesarean sections.

General Liability
Kristin also represents hospitals in general liability matters, including trip-and-fall and slip-and-fall litigation, and in hospital inpatient transfer and discharge practice matters.

EDUCATION

Juris Doctor, 2007, Charleston School of Law
Bachelor of Arts, 2002, Davidson College

ADMITTED

Georgia, 2007
Court of Appeals of Georgia
Supreme Court of Georgia
District Court for the Northern District of Georgia

MEMBERSHIPS

Super Lawyers
Georgia Rising Star (2012)
DeKalb County Bar Association
Georgia Defense Lawyers Association
Georgia Academy of Healthcare Attorneys
Georgia Society for Healthcare Risk Management
State Bar of Georgia
Defense Research Institute

PUBLICATIONS

"Who Can Consent for an Incapacitated Patient? Important New Changes to Georgia's Medical Consent Laws,” GSRHM Gazette, Vol. 20, Issue 2 (April 2011)

Co-author, Amicus Curiae Brief of Georgia Defense Lawyers Association in Baker v. Wellstar in the Georgia Court of Appeals advocating for the ability of defense attorneys to communicate ex parte with a plaintiff's treating healthcare providers (November 20, 2010)

"Unable to Bring Expert Witnesses Live at Trial? No Grounds for a Mistrial,” The Voice, Defense Research Institute, Vol. 8, Issue 23 (June 10, 2009)

Kristin LeBlanc, Abandoning Patients and Clients: Where Medicine can Learn from the Law, Charleston Law Review 237 (Spring 2007)

SPEAKING

"Update on the Law", 27th Annual Medical Malpractice Liability seminar, Institute of Continuing Legal Education in Georgia (November 3, 2011)

Addressed Georgia licensed private detectives on best practice surveillance techniques, professionalism in litigation, and testifying at trial (2009)

Addressed Labor & Delivery nursing staff and medical staff in hospital mock trial involving birth trauma litigation to demonstrate charting/documentation, chain of command, and electronic fetal monitoring issues common to litigation (2008)

REPRESENTATIVE CASES

Three-week medical malpractice trial resulting in defense verdict involving allegations against PACU and medical-surgical nursing staff related to compartment syndrome following wrist surgery.

Secured dismissal of hospital and hospital’s head of security from lawsuit involving claims of false arrest and intentional infliction of emotional distress by former employee related to patient identity fraud activities.

Secured defense verdict for hospital and hospitalist physician following two-week trial involving claims that physician inappropriately managed massive pulmonary embolus patient’s intravenous Heparin following administration of tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) and decision not to place inferior vena cava (IVC) filter, where patient expired.

Obtained exclusion of plaintiff’s life care planner and economist during medical malpractice trial for failure to satisfy expert qualifications and for unreliable expert analyses, resulting in inability of plaintiff’s counsel to support any claim for economic damages at trial.

Secured dismissal of plaintiff’s appeal from a jury verdict in favor of hospital and its nursing staff which lasted over 2 years due to plaintiff’s failure to follow Georgia procedural appeals rules.

Obtained defense verdict on behalf of hospital and it Labor and Delivery nurses in a 2-week medical malpractice/birth trauma involving allegations of: failure to insist that obstetrician come to the bedside to evaluate the patient; failure to notify obstetrician when Pitocin restarted following a deceleration in the fetal heart tones; and failure to insist that obstetrician perform Cesarean section.

Obtained defense verdict on behalf of hospital and its emergency medicine physician in a two-week medical malpractice trial involving allegations of physicians: failure to consider vertebral artery dissection, failure to obtain a neurology consult, and failure to obtain neuroimaging studies on an 18-year-old patient who became unresponsive following an assault, who experienced a prolonged period of inadequate oxygenation prior to arrival to the Emergency Room, and who was found to be 11½ weeks pregnant. Also secured defense verdict on allegations of in utero injuries to the fetus.