In a research article entitled “On the Influence of Apologies on the Likelihood of Lawsuits in Cases of Perceived Medical Negligence: Analysis of Archival and Experimental Data” published on October 14, 2025 in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, the researchers sought to investigate whether individuals’ perceptions of harm resulting from medical procedures influence their intention to seek legal recourse and if apologies may mitigate the inclination for legal action.
The study’s authors used the term “disappointing medical care” (DMC) that they defined as encompassing cases of medical failures, malpractice, or errors. They conducted four studies using a dataset of social media posts detailing possible DMC incidents to which they linked a proxy for legal action (specifically, future posts related to legal action). Study 1 used a machine learning model to predict a proxy for an intent to file a lawsuit based on the content of 3,815 posts. Two preregistered crowdsourcing studies assessed the impact of different apology types on intention-to-sue in ten diverse medical scenarios with four apology conditions. Study number 4 sought to test whether the predictors of legal intent identified in the crowdsourced studies and modeled as a function of case attributes can generalize to an actual subset of 165 Reddit (Reddit, Inc) posts.
“The act of apologizing embodies acknowledgment of a transgression, which can be accompanied by expressions of remorse, regret, or empathy. The multifaceted nature of an apology raises an open question of whether apologies can attenuate negative emotions, repair damaged relationships, and enhance overall satisfaction. Such effects have been shown in research in various contexts. Available research implicitly suggests that apologies bear a power to transcend service interactions, resonating with the social dynamics of apologies to foster forgiveness, reduce punitive intentions, and facilitate conflict resolution. Thus, the seemingly simple act of apologizing may offer health care providers a path to alleviate people’s emotional distress, improve strained patient-provider relationships, and possibly stop the escalation into legal actions following a case of disappointing medical care (DMC). However, there is limited research on the effects of apologies in health care. Within this limited research, some studies report a decrease in the likelihood of lawsuits when health care providers disclose incident details and offer apologies. In contrast, others report mixed or no significant effect.”
The researchers found that apologies are rarely mentioned in descriptions of DMCs and that the descriptions of DMCs predict the proxy of legal action. They found that crowdsourcing studies reinforce these findings: people agree on which cases are worthy of legal action and the results of the study found that physical and emotional damage are independently the strongest predictors of intention to file a lawsuit, together accounting for 43%-48% of model variance: “Apologies are not statistically significant predictors for the intent to file a lawsuit (P>.05), both separately and in interaction with physical and emotional damage.”
The researchers concluded: “Text-based apologies appear to exert little influence on individuals’ intention to file a lawsuit in DMC cases, while physical and emotional damage are the primary motivators. This suggests that medical providers aiming to mitigate legal risks must explore alternative interventions beyond apologies.”
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