The attorney's fee: compensation for the work
The contingency fee is the attorney's own compensation for handling the case — calculated as a percentage of the settlement or award. It's earnings, not a reimbursement, and it's what the attorney keeps for taking on the risk and the work of the case.
Case costs: real expenses the case required
Case costs are something entirely different: actual out-of-pocket expenses the case genuinely needed. This typically includes expert witness fees, court filing fees, the cost of obtaining medical records, deposition transcripts, and similar litigation expenses. These are reimbursed, not earned.
An early cost unique to malpractice filing
Vermont law requires a plaintiff to file a certificate of merit alongside the complaint in a medical malpractice case. Preparing that certificate typically involves an early expert-review cost well before the case fully proceeds — a cost specific to the malpractice filing process that an ordinary car accident or slip-and-fall case wouldn't incur in the same way.
A genuinely distinctive repose rule
Vermont's statute of repose for medical malpractice generally bars filing more than seven years after the alleged malpractice — with one notable exception for cases involving the discovery of a foreign object left in the patient's body. And where a health care provider fraudulently concealed the negligence, preventing the patient's discovery of it, there is no applicable statute of limitations at all.
Who fronts the money while the case is pending
Commonly, the attorney's office advances case costs as the litigation proceeds, including the early certificate-of-merit cost in malpractice claims, with reimbursement coming out of the eventual settlement or award. The specific arrangement depends entirely on the individual fee agreement.