Apologies are a common part of everyday experience, yet they also play a significant role in interactions that have substantial economic consequences such as medical malpractice litigation. In this study, we take advantage of the implementation of apology laws across the United States to attempt to quantify the lower bound of the value patients and courts place on apologies. We also attempt to locate the locus of the effect, and find that apologies are most effective in cases involving obstetrics and anesthesia, in cases involving improper management or a failure to diagnose, and in cases involving infants and small children. Apologies have substantial value either as evidence for the courts, or as a mechanism that helps alleviate a patient's demands for restitution. The identification of the relative importance of each channel remains open for future work