Prostate Cancer Misdiagnosis Lawsuit: Proof, Payouts, and Deadlines

A prostate cancer misdiagnosis lawsuit is a medical malpractice claim brought when a doctor’s failure to screen for, diagnose, or correctly interpret tests for prostate cancer causes real harm, whether that means a delayed diagnosis that lets the cancer spread or a false diagnosis that leads to unnecessary surgery. Historically, most of these cases end in defense verdicts at trial, but the payouts when patients win are substantial: an analysis of prostate cancer malpractice cases from 2000 to 2013 found average out-of-court settlements of $945,000 and average jury awards for plaintiffs of $2.1 million.¹

The Errors That Drive These Cases

Most claims center on the PSA blood test rather than on surgery or treatment. In the same 2000–2013 analysis, the single most common allegation was a doctor’s failure to order an initial PSA test at all, at nearly 27% of cases. Failure to follow up on an elevated PSA came second at about 22%. Failing to communicate a rising PSA to the patient accounted for roughly 14%, and it was the only allegation where plaintiff verdicts outnumbered defense verdicts.²

Other recurring errors:

Not referring a patient to a urologist after abnormal screening, cited in about 6% of cases.
Not ordering or performing a biopsy when PSA levels or imaging called for one, at about 5%.
Misreading biopsy tissue and assigning an incorrect Gleason score, which drives treatment decisions.
Attributing urinary symptoms or pelvic pain to benign prostatic hyperplasia or a urinary tract infection without further workup.³

Primary care physicians are named as defendants roughly 74% of the time, urologists about 20%.¹ That tracks with where PSA screening usually happens. When urologists are the defendants, the claims tend to be biopsy-related: failing to perform one, failing to repeat one, or mishandling the procedure.²

Gleason Score Errors

Pathology mistakes are a smaller share of these lawsuits but especially consequential, because the Gleason grade drives whether a patient is monitored, operated on, or irradiated. Pathologists disagree on Gleason scores more often than patients expect. One study in the American Journal of Clinical Pathology found only 60% concordance between pathologists reviewing the same specimens, with most disagreements between scores of 6 and 7.⁴ Another study found that biopsy grades matched the final prostatectomy pathology only about 35% of the time.⁵

False Diagnosis and Unnecessary Surgery

On the opposite side are men incorrectly told they have prostate cancer who undergo prostatectomy and learn afterward they were cancer-free. The injuries are distinct: permanent erectile dysfunction, urinary incontinence, and the psychological weight of major surgery for a disease that was never there.

The most striking recent example is Rickie Huitt, an Iowa retiree whose biopsy sample was accidentally switched in a laboratory with a sample from a man who did have cancer. Huitt underwent a prostatectomy in April 2017 that left him permanently impotent and incontinent. In April 2019, a Polk County jury awarded him $12.25 million against The Iowa Clinic and the pathologist responsible.⁶ In a Massachusetts case, a 58-year-old man died on the operating table during a prostatectomy for a cancer he did not have; the surgical specimen showed no malignancy, and a review of the original biopsy slides later concluded the tissue was benign. His family settled for $1 million, the defendant’s full policy limits.⁷

What You Have to Prove

A wrong diagnosis by itself is not a lawsuit. You have to prove four things:

Duty of care. A doctor-patient relationship existed, which obliged the doctor to meet accepted medical standards, including appropriate screening for at-risk patients, accurate interpretation of results, and timely referrals.
Breach. The doctor failed to act as a reasonably competent physician would in the same situation. Ignoring an elevated PSA, skipping follow-up testing, or misreading a biopsy slide are typical examples.
Causation. The breach actually caused the harm. In delayed-diagnosis cases, that usually means showing earlier detection would have produced a better outcome or less aggressive treatment. In false-positive cases, it means the patient was harmed by treatment that should never have happened.
Damages. The patient suffered measurable losses: medical bills, lost income, pain and suffering, or reduced life expectancy.

Causation is where these cases are usually fought. Prostate cancer tends to grow slowly, and defense attorneys argue that even with earlier detection, the outcome would not have changed. Plaintiffs answer with the survival numbers: the five-year survival rate for prostate cancer confined to the prostate exceeds 99%, but drops to around 32% once it has metastasized.⁸ That gap is the spine of most delayed-diagnosis claims.

Expert testimony is essential. A physician in the same specialty as the defendant has to explain what the standard of care required and how the defendant fell short. Because major screening guidelines do not mandate universal PSA testing, defense lawyers sometimes invoke the “two schools of thought” doctrine to argue that not screening was an acceptable choice. Research on malpractice litigation has found this defense unreliable, particularly where a physician never discussed screening with a high-risk patient at all.²

What These Cases Have Paid

Payouts vary widely with the severity of the harm and the strength of the evidence. Some representative outcomes:

$12.25 million verdict (2019): the Huitt case, involving a laboratory sample switch and unnecessary prostatectomy.⁶
$4.5 million settlement: a doctor failed to act on an abnormal PSA of 6.07 in 2012 and never referred the patient. The patient was not diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer until 2016 and died in 2019 at age 59.⁹
$2.84 million verdict: a urologist wrote off an elevated PSA as benign; the patient later turned out to have Gleason 9 cancer.¹⁰
$2.25 million settlement (2024): a case involving prostate cancer recurrence.¹¹
$1.93 million verdict (2018): a urologist did not explain the significance of a high PSA reading or the need for follow-up. The patient was not diagnosed until three years later.¹²
$1.5 million settlement (2009): a general practitioner labeled three elevated PSA readings as “normal for the patient’s age,” delaying diagnosis until the cancer had spread to the seminal vesicles and cutting the patient’s 15-year survival projection from 90% to 60%.¹³
$1.2 million settlement (2023): a Virginia family practitioner misread a PSA of 20.0 as 2.0 and prescribed testosterone therapy, which is contraindicated for prostate cancer. A later biopsy confirmed Gleason 9 cancer.¹⁴
$175,000 mediated settlement: a Gleason score dispute, where the plaintiff argued cancer was present at an initial negative biopsy and the defense argued against over-reading slides.¹⁵

Damages typically break into two categories. Economic damages cover quantifiable losses: past and future medical bills, lost wages, reduced earning capacity, long-term care costs. Non-economic damages cover pain, emotional distress, loss of bodily function, loss of enjoyment of life, and loss of consortium.⁸ If misdiagnosis leads to death, eligible family members can pursue wrongful death damages covering medical and burial expenses, loss of companionship, and the deceased’s lost future income.⁹

How Your State Shapes What You Can Recover

Two features of state law can change the value of an identical case dramatically.

The first is damage caps. Many states cap non-economic damages in malpractice cases. California’s cap, historically $250,000 under the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act, was raised substantially by AB 35 in 2022; as of January 2025, the cap stands at $430,000 for non-death cases and $600,000 for wrongful death, with annual increases running through 2033. Texas caps non-economic damages at $250,000 against an individual physician plus additional amounts against facilities, up to a total of $750,000. New York and Florida do not cap malpractice damages at all.¹⁶ Economic damages, the actual medical costs and lost income, are generally uncapped everywhere.

The second is the loss-of-chance doctrine, which matters when a patient’s prognosis was already uncertain. Under traditional malpractice law, a plaintiff whose survival odds were, say, 40% before the delay might recover nothing, because they cannot prove it was more likely than not that the delay caused death. Loss-of-chance lets the patient recover damages proportional to the reduction in their chance of survival caused by the negligence. A delay that dropped survival probability from 60% to 40% would support damages tied to that 20-percentage-point loss. As of late 2019, 31 U.S. jurisdictions had adopted some version of the doctrine; 15 had rejected it.¹⁷

Deadlines: Do Not Wait

Every state has a filing deadline, and missing it usually ends the case regardless of how strong the evidence is. Cancer misdiagnosis creates a particular problem because patients often do not realize an error occurred until the cancer surfaces years later.

Most states use a “discovery rule” that starts the clock when the patient discovers, or reasonably should have discovered, the negligence. Many states then allow only one to two years from that point.¹⁸ A few states, including Maine, Idaho, Arkansas, and South Dakota, generally start the clock before discovery.

Some specific deadlines to know:

New York: under Lavern’s Law, enacted in 2018, cancer misdiagnosis claims can be filed within two years and six months of discovery, capped at seven years from the negligent act. A 2023 ruling in Saffa v. Katz held that the clock is triggered by when the patient knew or should have known of the negligent act, not when the patient learned they had cancer.¹⁸¹⁹
Georgia: two years from injury, with an absolute five-year statute of repose from the date of the negligent act.²⁰
California: three years from the misdiagnosis or one year from discovery.²¹
Michigan: two years from the error or six months from discovery, with a six-year statute of repose.²²

The Certificate-of-Merit Gate

Roughly 29 states require a procedural step before a malpractice suit can move forward: a certificate or affidavit of merit. It is a document, usually sworn by a qualified medical expert in the same specialty as the defendant, stating the claim has a valid basis, that the standard of care was likely breached, and that the breach likely caused harm.²³

Timing varies. Nevada and Illinois require the affidavit with the initial complaint. Colorado and Maryland allow 60 to 90 days after filing. Texas allows 120 days. Failure to comply can lead to dismissal, sometimes with prejudice, meaning the claim cannot be refiled.²³ About 21 states, including Massachusetts, Oregon, and Alaska, do not require one.

How the Case Moves

The process starts with medical records: notes, lab results, imaging, biopsy reports, prescriptions from every involved provider. An expert reviews the file to decide whether a claim is viable. If it is, the complaint is filed with the court.

Discovery is the longest phase, running 12 to 18 months, and includes document exchange, written questions, and depositions. Settlement talks or mediation typically follow, taking another three to six months. If nothing resolves, the case moves to trial preparation and a trial that can run one to four weeks. Start to finish, expect two to four years.

Most malpractice attorneys work on contingency, taking 30% to 40% of any recovery and charging nothing upfront if the case does not succeed.²⁴ In the 2000–2013 dataset, about 64% of prostate cancer malpractice cases proceeded to trial, with the rest settling; the majority of tried cases ended in defense verdicts.¹ If you suspect a diagnostic error, the practical first move is a records request and a consultation with a malpractice attorney in your state, well ahead of your deadline.

1
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2
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3
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NJ Atty. Failure to Diagnose Prostate Cancer
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Virginia Lawyers Weekly. Prostate Cancer Misdiagnosed After Misread Test Result
15
Renal and Urology News. Gleason Score Is Focus of Malpractice Litigation
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Desert Mountain Insurance. Tort Reform on Medical Malpractice
17
National Center for Biotechnology Information. Loss of Chance Doctrine and Genomic Medicine
18
ASCO Post. Lavern’s Law and Its Implications for Oncology
19
Justia. Saffa v Katz, 2023 NY Slip Op 23307
20
Justia. Georgia Code Section 9-3-71
21
Verdict Victory. Affidavit of Merit Chart
22
Lipton Law. Cancer Misdiagnosis Claim Process in Michigan
23
Expert Institute. States With Certificate or Affidavit of Merit Requirements
24
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