Gerard C. Scott, Attorney at Law

Born 1959 Rochester, New York. Resident of Kansas since 1960. Attended Wichita public schools
K-12. Wichita Heights 1977. Wichita State University BS 1981. University of Kansas School of Law
JD 1984.

Former State of Kansas Sedgwick County Public Defender. Tried many felony cases including murder. Private practice of law since 1986. Emphasis on medical malpractice, personal injury, workers compensation. Significant trial and appellate experience particularly in handling medical malpractice.

Gerard Scott practicing in personal injury, medical malpractice, and workers compensation.

The older I get, the more I realize how some of the most important things remain the same.  Hello I'm Gerard Scott.   If your looking for a lawyer who is a real person I think you came to the right place.  I am very much the same real person that I was as a young child.  Maybe even still a bit corny, but I proud to have been instilled with an abiding and overriding value that we must fight for what is right.  And, there is only one way to fight.  You fight with everything you got. 

I grew up here in Wichita and attended Wichita public schools. Myself, and several of my classmates at the former North Pleasant Valley Elementary School all agree that our 5th and 6th grade teacher Mrs. Hubb's provided us with the best years of the schooling we ever received. After graduation from Heights High School, I decided to stay in Wichita and attend Wichita State University where I could pursue an Administration of Justice Degree with emphasis in forensic investigations. I'm a highly sensitive person. I've always had a natural inclination for seeing and discerning important, yet seemingly insignificant facts, and piecing together difficult to solve puzzles. Lawsuits are oftentimes won or lost in the discovery phase. My sensitivity and understanding of people has led me to uncover key evidence that everyone else has overlooked.

I understand hard work. The summer after completing my 10th grade I began working summers digging deep ditches for Utility Contractors. The work was hard and dangerous. They thought I was a college student. While I attended Wichita State I worked summers at the Dold meat plant on 29th. I worked so hard that management was always finding ways to keep me on despite my temporary status and lack of seniority. In 1979 I married my wife Marsha. After graduation from nursing school she began working as an R.N. in Labor and Delivery. Marsha is an experienced obstetrical nurse and has worked as a manager and a staff nurse in labor/delivery departments at both large and small hospitals in Kansas and other states for almost 30 years. I also have a brother who is general surgeon and a sister-in-law who is Obstetrician. My best friend since my days at WSU is a general surgeon. Fortunately, neither my friend, nor my brother, practice here in Kansas.

I've handle more medical malpractice case than I can recall. I've handled cases in just about every subspecialty area of medicine. I learned medicine by consulting with world renowned experts, and reading hundreds of medical texts and thousands of articles.

I have a deep passion for representing the victims of medical malpractice. Shortly after getting out of law school and while I was a public defender, my wife suffered a spinal cord injury while undergoing surgery for scoliosis. I was told by the surgeon that a surgical instrument had slipped and possibly contused the spinal cord, but that Marsha would fully recover. In the months following the surgery it appeared the surgeon was ignoring Marsha's injury. Nearly two years after the surgery it was apparent that not only had a surgical mistake been made, but also that permanent nerve damage had resulted. However apparent things were to me and Marsha, the surgeon had recorded a different story in the medical records. The medical record of Marsha's intraoperative spinal cord monitoring indicated that no injury to spinal cord had occurred during surgery, and the surgeon's notes of her office visits during the months which followed failed to record her continuing neurologic deficits.

We were unable to find a malpractice lawyer to pursue her case, so with the help of my new law firm I began working my first malpractice case. After much digging I discovered evidence and testimony indicating that the medical report identified as recording Marsha's intraoperative spinal cord monitoring, actually belonged to another of the surgeon's patients. Somehow the information as to other patients surgical monitoring had been typed word-for-word onto a report with Marsha's name. I was able to locate the other patient as well as the technician who performed the monitoring in both cases. The technician testified that the report with Marsha's name was a phony and did not reveal the truth regarding the untoward surgical event that had occurred.

During the nearly twenty years that have followed I've handled many malpractice cases; many settlements and many trials. Incredibly, a nearly identical story involving phony records unfolded in the case of a young girl I represented who could no longer walk following her back surgery. Yet another case so difficult that the other lawyers have refused to take, eventual discovery of altered records, and eventually a favorable settlement or verdict, including several million for a young girl who suffered a spinal injury.

I have a large number of cases which have been decided in the Court of Appeals and Supreme Court of Kansas and published in the law books. Brooks v. Bennett, 29 Kan.App.2d 308, 26 P.3d 73 (2001); George v. Pauly, 30 Kan.App.2d 444, 45 P.3d 1 (2001); Wilson v. Knight, 26 Kan.App.2d 226, 982 P.2d 400 (1999); Cox v. Lesko, 263 Kan. 805, 953 P.2d 1033 (1998); Cox v. Lesko, 23 Kan.App.2d 794, 935 P.2d 1086 (1997); Honeycutt By and Through Phillips v. City of Wichita, 251 Kan. 451, 836 P.2d 1128 (1992); Honeycutt By and Through Phillips v. City of Wichita, 247 Kan. 250, 796 P.2d 549 (1990); State v. Turner, 239 Kan. 360, 721 P.2d 255 (1986); Duarte v. Debruce Grain, Inc., 276 Kan. 598, 78 P.3d 428 (2003); Brower ex rel. McKinney v. Bartal, 268 Kan. 43, 990 P.2d 1235 (1999); Hull v. Agustin, 22 Kan.App.2d 464, 918 P.2d 651 (1996); Williams v. Beech Aircraft Corp., Inc., 15 Kan.App.2d 685, 815 P.2d 1113 (1991).