Willingham & Coté, P.C.
Medical Malpractice

Experience with integrity and results

The medical malpractice defense practice at Willingham & Coté, P.C., has over fifty years of experience representing hospitals, physicians, and other healthcare providers. With numerous victories in the most complex cases, we have earned a reputation as one of the state’s leading medical malpractice defense firms. We are experienced, dedicated, and responsive to each unique case. We quickly and efficiently develop a thorough defense strategy utilizing our vast medical resources to determine whether a case should be resolved or go to trial. Providing our clients with the strongest tactical advantage for the most favorable outcome is our promise.

What you can expect

Our medical malpractice defense team is multifaceted with administrative assistants, paralegals, and attorneys to ensure high quality, expeditious service. We are devoted advocates for healthcare professionals. Our team possesses extensive medical knowledge, allowing us to quickly identify and understand the pertinent issues and then plan the most successful strategy for each case. We understand your professional license is very important to you and we will aggressively defend you to help preserve your license. We also will meet with you and extensively prepare you for each step of the litigation process starting with the initial filing of the notice of intent all the way through trial.

Standard of Care

This is the standard applicable in a medical malpractice action. It is generally defined as what a physician of ordinary learning, judgment and skill in the same specialty would or would not do under the same or similar circumstances. Our defense team has significant experience in assisting its clients with demonstrating this standard has been met – both in motion practice as well as to juries across the State of Michigan.

Medical expert testimony

We utilize an extensive database of highly credible physicians and expert medical witnesses, each an expert in their related healthcare field.

Our team has tried various cases within the following healthcare specialties:

Orthopedics, cardiology, neurology, infectious disease, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, anesthesia, podiatry, emergency medicine, jail medicine, pathology, physical medicine and rehabilitation/pain medicine, family medicine, and dentistry.

Areas of Healthcare Practice/Emphasis:

Medical malpractice defense litigation, disciplinary and licensing investigations, healthcare contracting (between physician groups and hospital as well as physician groups and providers), medical practice formation and registration, statutory compliance (Stark, Anti-kickback, HIPAA-HITECH, EMTALA), reimbursement, restrictive covenants, telemedicine, prescriptive authority, claims and risk management, advance practice provider supervision regulations, healthcare compliance plans, policies and procedures, compliance investigations, HIPAA breaches and remediation, and corporate practice of medicine.

Medical Malpractice Blog

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Courts in which we tried cases to verdict:

Federal Court-Eastern District
Federal Court-Western District

  • Allegan
  • Alpena
  • Calhoun
  • Clinton
  • Eaton
  • Emmet
  • Genesee
  • Grand Traverse
  • Gratiot
  • Ingham
  • Ionia
  • Isabella
  • Kalamazoo
  • Jackson
  • Livingston
  • Lenawee
  • Marquette
  • Oakland
  • Saginaw
  • Shiawasee
  • St. Joseph
  • Van Buren
  • Washtenaw
  • Wayne
  • Wexford

Members

Ann Graham Nichols

Attorney
Michael Stephenson

Michael W. Stephenson

Director
Joseph VanHorn

Joseph Van Horn

Director