Chinonis, Nancy K.

Scott joined Marshall, Dennehey, Warner, Coleman & Goggin as a shareholder in 2008, bringing a substantial portion of his prior firm, McDonough, Korn, Eichhorn & Schorr, with him to MDWC&G.

Scott has devoted the vast majority of his practice of 31 years to the defense of physicians and other health care practitioners in various types of health care liability matters. During that time, he has developed a reputation for excellence in the defense of medical malpractice cases throughout the courts in northern and central New Jersey.

Based upon his trial skills and experience, he has been Certified by the New Jersey Supreme Court as a Civil Trial Attorney since 1985. He was elected to the American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA) in 2005. From  2005 through 2011,  Scott has been recognized as a "Super Lawyer" in the field of Medical Malpractice Defense for the special edition of New Jersey Super Lawyers Magazine.

Scott has routinely retained multiple disciplines of highly-qualified experts in sophisticated matters in order to defend such cases on a variety of levels, thus achieving settlements far below the plaintiffs' monetary demands. He has personally handled over 150 jury trials to verdict, in addition to handling many hundreds of litigated cases throughout his career. He has achieved successful defense verdicts in 95% of his jury trials. The vast majority of these cases have been complex medical malpractice cases involving severe, permanent injuries and/or death. Scott's significant experience has positioned him to represent hundreds of physicians, hospitals, and nurses in all types of health care liability and licensing matters.

Over the years, Scott's medical malpractice defense caseload has evolved into primarily severe, catastrophic permanent injury and death matters ranging from neurological and orthopedic damage, negligence and misdiagnosis, to cancer and sudden cardiac death cases. Scott has also developed a specific expertise in the handling of birth cases resulting in permanent Erb's Palsy  (brachial plexus) injuries.

Scott is a graduate of Bucknell University, where he received a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration in 1976. He then attended and graduated from Villanova University School of Law in 1979. In that year, he was a member of the Villanova National Moot Court Team, which was awarded the Frank Edward Roda Award by the Pennsylvania Trial Lawyers Association in recognition of the Pennsylvania law school that advanced the farthest in the National Moot Court Competition. This was then followed by a one-year Judicial Clerkship for the Honorable Edward W. Beglin, J.S.C. and Hon. Lawrence Weiss, J.S.C. in Union County, New Jersey.

Significant Representative Matters:

• The case of Howard v. University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey, 172 N.J. 537 (2002); Successfully argued before the New Jersey Supreme Court to prevent a plaintiff from being able to allege fraudulent misrepresentation against a surgeon for allegedly misrepresenting his credentials and experience to the patient prior to the patient's agreement to the surgery. The New Jersey Supreme Court held that such an allegation is properly encompassed within an Informed Consent claim.
  
  
• Defended a general practitioner in a group of over 70 consolidated cases filed against the physician (and New Jersey Transit Rail) for the doctor's role in permitting a New Jersey Transit engineer to continue to operate a commuter train after abnormalities were revealed on the vision portion of his annual certification examination. The engineer subsequently ran a stop indication, causing a head-on collision between two commuter trains, resulting in many severe injuries and some deaths. The cases were all ultimately settled, with 75% of the monetary contribution being paid by New Jersey Transit, and only 25% of the payment being made on behalf of the physician.
  
  
• Obtained defense verdicts in favor of the doctors at trial in several cases filed against Cardiologists involving cardiac death.  The decedents in these cases were all relatively young (30-45 years of age) married men with solid employment histories, who left behind wives and young children.
  
  
• Obtained defense verdicts at trial in many cases involving allegations of failure to diagnose multiple medical conditions, including rare diseases such as pheochromocytoma (rare form of adrenal cancer).
  
  
• Defense verdict in Union County case in which a middle-aged male presented to the ER with fecal impaction and expired after several hours of conservative medical treatment by the defendant general surgeon.
  
  
• Defense verdict in an Essex County case in which a middle-aged female died of a yeast infection after several days of medical treatment by the defendant Infectious Disease specialist in the hospital.
  
  
• Defense verdict in Union County case against a Pediatric Urologist for failure to diagnose testicular torsion in a teenage male, resulting in the loss of a testicle and decreased fertility.
  
  
• Was the only defense attorney to obtain a jury verdict in favor of their client in the 2004 trial of the case of Pellicer v. St. Barnabas Medical Center, et al.,  which resulted in the largest medical malpractice verdict in New Jersey history -  $76 million. The jury verdict was appealed by the defense and was ultimately reversed and remanded for a new trial on all issues by the NJ Supreme Court, due to multiple errors by the trial court which “prevaded the trial” and cumulated to “unfairly tilt the balance in favor of plaintiffs and to deprive defendants of a fair trial”.