One side effect of a career writing about the legal system is that I imagine potential lawsuits  everywhere: Spilled juice at the grocery store, a driver texting on the highway and, most recently, the specter of overwhelmed and undersupplied health care providers treating waves of COVID-19 patients.

Georgia lawyers who’ve won big medical malpractice verdicts said such a worst case scenario actually would make it difficult for plaintiffs to prevail. That’s because the “standard of care” that is compared with the treatment a patient received depends on the circumstances facing the doctors and nurses at the time of the treatment.