Plaintiff's Medical Malpractice · Greenbrae, California
I have litigated for thirty-five years — first on the defense side, since 1998 for the injured, and since 2012 in medical malpractice alone. I take each case myself, from the first call to the verdict, to reach what a hospital would rather keep behind closed doors: how it chooses, and keeps, the physicians it puts in front of you.
The Work
Death and major-injury cases against the physicians and the hospitals responsible for them. No fender-benders, no volume practice.
The throughline of everything I do: holding a hospital (and its non-licensed healthcare ownership entity) to its own duty to vet, monitor, and recredential the doctors it grants privileges.
Representing the families left behind, and pressing the institution — not only the individual who treated them — to answer.
How I Practice
Haberkorn & Associates means me. There is no rotating cast you never chose, no junior associate learning your case on your dime. When an appeal or a specialty demands it, I bring in co-counsel or appellate counsel by name — otherwise the lawyer who answers your first call is the lawyer who stands at the verdict.
I carry every case from inception through trial: the investigation, the experts, the depositions, the motions, and the argument. A boutique of one cannot take every case. It can give its whole attention to the ones it takes.
I built this practice from the other side of the table. I began as a defense lawyer, representing manufacturers against the families of people their products had killed or injured. In 1998 I crossed over to the plaintiff's side and built a personal-injury practice; in 2012 I narrowed it to medical malpractice alone — and then to the question underneath it.
In every case I now ask the same thing: was the hospital or surgery center negligent in credentialing the physician at the center of the harm? No stone is left unturned. I investigate those physicians before, during, and after they testify under oath — because the harm rarely starts in the exam room. It starts in the credentialing file, in the decision to grant and renew privileges to a physician the institution had reason to question.
The Law
In 1968 the Legislature enacted Evidence Code section 1157, placing the records and proceedings of hospital peer review beyond the reach of discovery. Fourteen years passed before Elam v. College Park Hospital (1982) 132 Cal.App.3d 332 held that a hospital owes its patients a direct, nondelegable duty to use reasonable care in selecting and overseeing the competence of its medical staff — a duty discharged not once at the door, but through credentialing and periodic recredentialing on the schedule the hospital fixes in its own bylaws.
The duty became law. The evidence that proves its breach — what the hospital knew about a physician each time it granted and renewed his privileges — stayed locked behind the 1968 privilege. That gap, between a duty the courts will enforce and a record the statute conceals, is where I practice.
Reaching the record
The shield is not absolute. Fox v. Kramer (2000) 22 Cal.4th 531 confirms that section 1157 confers a discovery immunity, not an evidentiary privilege: it reaches compelled discovery between parties to litigation, and it "does not bar introduction of evidence voluntarily offered by a participant in the peer review proceedings or voluntarily produced in the course of discovery."
The immunity protects a committee's deliberations. It has never protected the hospital's own administration. Matchett v. Superior Court (1974) 40 Cal.App.3d 623 said it at the beginning: the immunity "does not embrace the files of the hospital administration." Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital v. Superior Court (1985) 174 Cal.App.3d 711 holds that hospital administrators "cannot evade their concurrent duty to insure the adequacy of medical care provided patients at their facility simply by purporting to have delegated that entire responsibility to medical staff committees" — information administrators develop that does not derive from a committee's investigation into the quality of care remains discoverable. And Brown v. Superior Court (1985) 168 Cal.App.3d 489 permits a malpractice plaintiff to discover whether the hospital evaluated its physicians at all — the fact of evaluation, or its absence, is neither a proceeding nor a record of any committee. The burden of proving the immunity rests on the hospital that claims it, not the patient who was harmed.
The Supreme Court's most recent word, Gutierrez v. Tostado (Cal., July 31, 2025, No. S283128), holds the line from the other direction: the professional obligations a provider owes in rendering medical care to its patients are distinct from the duties it owes to the public generally — the distinction on which Elam rests the credentialing duty on the institution itself.
Business and Professions Code section 805 defines the "peer review body" the statute protects — and compels reports to the Medical Board that exist outside the immunity altogether. The procedural levers come from Code of Civil Procedure section 437c: Chavez v. 24 Hour Fitness USA, Inc. (2015) 238 Cal.App.4th 632 on the continuance that follows a showing that facts essential to the opposition may exist but cannot yet be presented, and Thompson v. Ioane (2017) 11 Cal.App.5th 1180 on a movant's obligation to carry its own burden before any burden shifts to the party opposing judgment.
The pattern — one question, every kind of institution
This is not one rogue hospital. The same question — did the institution vet and monitor the physician it credentialed? — runs through matters against the largest hospital systems in California and the independent facilities beside them.
HCA Healthcare · Good Samaritan Hospital
Sutter Health
Dignity Health
San Mateo Surgery Center
Montage Health · Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula
Statutes in play
CCP § 340.5 (MICRA period; "health care provider") · Civ. Code § 3333.2 (MICRA noneconomic cap) · CCP § 425.13 (order required to plead punitives against a provider) · Civ. Code § 3294 (malice; managing-agent predicate) · CCP § 377.60 (wrongful-death standing) · 22 CCR § 70701 (governing body's duty for quality of care)
The corporate-negligence theory is pleaded to fall outside MICRA — HCA is the parent, not the provider — so the cap and the punitive-pleading bar do not shelter it.
Background
Matthew Haberkorn is a sole-practitioner plaintiff's medical malpractice trial lawyer in Greenbrae, California, admitted to the State Bar of California (No. 152424).
I started on the defense side, representing manufacturers against the families of those their products had killed or injured. In 1998 I crossed over to represent the injured, building a plaintiff's personal-injury practice; in 2012 I narrowed it to medical malpractice exclusively. What sets these cases apart is where I look: in every matter I examine whether the hospital or surgery center credentialed the responsible physician negligently — and I leave no stone unturned investigating those physicians before, during, and after they testify under oath.
Since crossing over, I have represented the injured and grieving families one case at a time, against systems built to outlast them. The work is narrow on purpose. It is also, when it lands, the only thing that makes an institution answer for whom it chose to trust with your care.
Contact
If you believe a hospital or physician caused a death or a serious injury, write or call. Consultations on injury and wrongful-death matters are without charge, and what you tell me is held in confidence.
