Galit Kerner & Co. Law Offices

Galit Kerner & Co. is one of Israel’s leading medical malpractice and insurance firms.

The firm leads and manages, in a publicized manner, complex malpractice claims, and applications to the government ministries on broad issues of the disabled persons community with an emphasis on special-needs children.

Availability and Compassion: The human capital that consists of physicians who serve as advisors and the personal familiarity with the legal world and decisionmakers of various levels are some of the clear advantages of G. Kerner & Co.

Innovative Legal Leadership: The firm’s founder is leading a change in the medical norms concerning disabled persons, a fact which made her the leader of an innovative legal leadership.

(Co-)Chairperson of the Israel Bar Association’s Central District Torts Committee. Serves as the chairperson and lecturer in seminars and conventions of various organizations, such as Medical-Expo Ltd.

The firm’s goal in its unique operation model is to reach a de facto implementation of the duties that apply to medical treatment and/or clarify and update them as to benefit the patients, in order to prevent the next malpractice case – this is how you lead to a change in the rules of the game.

About

Adv. Kerner interned in 1997 in the torts field and founded the firm in 2002, as a pure-play medical malpractice and insurance plaintiffs firm. Adv. Kerner lectures on medical malpractice in various forums and participates in TV shows as a commentator, and is an expert on medical law, and handles the binding legal norms that concern the behavior of doctors, ethical issues and the set of legal rules that facilitates the patient-doctor interaction and the doctor-healthcare system interaction and duty, including the interactions vis-à-vis the various government ministries which are responsible for the welfare of the public/disabled/wards, as applicable.

Adv. Kerner formerly served (voluntarily) as Chairperson of the Friend Associations of the Etgarim Association. During the coronavirus crisis, the firm led voluntarily the famous Bagatz against the Ministry of Welfare for equal rights for 18,200 special-needs children in supervised living facilities, who remained locked in their supervised apartments after the end of lockdown, a Bagatz which led to a change in the instructions of the Ministry of Welfare and the implementation of the Duty of Transparency and also subjecting the Ministry’s decision to those of the Ministry of Health. Formerly, Adv. Kerner also served as an insurance advisor for the Ministry of Defense.

The firm maintains a special, open and reliable dialogue with various media outlets, that often serve as the voice of the clients/victims, while the system tends to refrain from publicizing its shortcomings. Thus, the firm represented the Harazi family, when the family’s father was disconnected from his medical ventilator in the Ichilov Hospital. With the assistance of the Channel 12 news team, those severe neglects were revealed to the public and the medical teams, who were all shocked to discover that there wasn’t a proper training on operating the ventilators and the respiratory accessories weren’t selected correctly, and there was no careful and appropriate functioning for preventing this death despite knowing of its certain possibility in advance.

Professionalism from a Sense of Mission and a Commitment to Knowledge – which is the Power

The firm is driven by the need for changing the medical practice and creating transparency and a learning process, as only these would lead to changing the negligent behavior patterns which would cause the medical malpractice cases to reoccur. The firm works towards the implementation of the duties of the medical staff and constructing a correct medical process for medical malpractice cases that happened in the past without being followed by a transparent debrief, with determination and resolve. For example, in the publicized case of the Late Adi Merzok, where a lawsuit was filed in 2014 when the Ministry of Health’s starting position was that there is no need to assemble a commission of inquiry – was concluded now, in 2021, with a decision to take disciplinary action against Dr. Rotman (from Assaf HaRofe Hospital) due to negligent conduct which led to the death of Adi at the age of 28. 8 years of struggle for one family. For the firm, the client is not just a number, rather a whole world which collapsed due to the events.

Thus, through hard work, discourse, determination, knowledge, you lead to a code which implements transparency, a lesson learning process and learning across the entire healthcare system. This sense of mission is for changing the rules of the games anew every time. For example, the Ministry of Health accepted Adv. Kerner’s position and opened an investigation for negligent events that led to the death of toddlers and which led, in the case of the “Terem” chain, to new lifesaving procedures in toddler testing.

Practice Areas

Pregnancy Medical Malpractice: Our firm specializes in negligence claims against physicians and healthcare institutes in pregnancy monitoring, negligent conduct in vacuum birth / shoulder dystocia / pathological cardi-otocography patterns etc.

Late Diagnosis of Genetic Syndromes: folate deficiency / not conducting PGD / late diagnosis of VACTER /Williams syndrome – the firm has unique experience in representing parents of children with VACTER / Williams syndrome which wasn’t discovered during the scans.

Late Diagnosis of Discoverable Syndromes: Our firm has experience in reviewing the medical equipment which is different in every clinic and evolves over the years and which accuracy and ability to detect various syndromes and anomalies is significant and sometimes critical in managing medical malpractice claims.

Negligence in Managing High-Risk Pregnancies: Our firm had great success in proving negligence of doctors duties in conducting multidisciplinary consulting with other doctors and sending to the required comprehensive tests, re-referring to various consulting including repeating genetic tests etc.

Negligence which led to Developmental Delays: Our firm successfully led numerous claims while receiving millions of Shekels of compensations due to ignoring of fetal distress signs by the medical teams.

Medical Malpractice – Preliminary Signs: Our firms successfully managed lawsuits in cases of late diagnosis of ascites, dilated bowel loops, pathologies in fetal echocardiography, pathologies in brain ultrasound or anomalies in various systems.

Late Diagnosis of Cancer: which led to lawsuits in the following cases: Negligent biopsies, ignoring pathological blood tests, not conducting complementary medical tests for anemia and/or Helicobacter, not sending to simple blood tests.

Surgical Errors: Too often has the firm managed lawsuits in cases where the medical teams didn’t remove the tumor completely.

Negligence and Neurological Damage: Failing to diagnose and treat aneurysm / failing to diagnose and provide prompt treatments to events that are suspected as CVA.

The Firm has an Insurance Department

Life, work incapacitation and long-term insurance claims: The firm’s insurance departments closely accompany disabled persons and plaintiffs in insurance claims. 
National Insurance Claims: Providing close legal assistance. 
Accessibility Law: The firm accompanies clients in the accessibility field, all in order to implement the core values of the right of equality.

The firm’s team includes associates, an R&D department, an office manager, a bookkeeping department and operational secretaries.