[arkades]

It depends on how many hours they've practiced. Initially, under a physician. Eventually, completely independent. The article describes the second doc as a "collaborating physician," but I went to the underlying court documents and, no, they were just a second informal consult - this NP was practicing independently.

The case isn't that unusual. Malpractice lawyers name everyone even tangentially related to a case, because malpractice insurance has a cap on payouts and you'll never go to court and win more than that cap, so you want to pull in as many people's policies as possible. Everyone that wasn't directly involved in the care of the patient gets their names dropped from the suit pretty quickly. Normally.

So, it's not unusual that the person that actually fucked up (the NP) settled, and someone not part of the patient's care said screw that (the MD).

Docs also don't choose for themselves whether they fight it in court. The malpractice insurer does. If you go against the insurer's wishes, you basically give up your malpractice coverage. In this case, I'm guessing that the fact that this is a slam-dunk "get thrown out of court" situation is why they didn't settle, as they do the vast majority of the time, regardless of the underlying merits of the case. Usually settling is cheaper than litigating, but a single "get this thrown out" motion is cheaper than settling.

The unusual thing here is just that MN is somewhat unique as one of the few states that doesn't explicitly require a doctor-patient relationship for its malpractice suits, so instead of getting thrown out, the case is going ahead.