Cases of lawyer malpractice should be tried by physicians.

In anticipation of a flood of ad hominem attacks, I’ll admit I’m neither a doctor nor lawyer but on occasion a customer of both.
 

Is this a lawyer who said this? If so, I’m ashamed.

The fact that a fellow lawyer took this case and sued under these circumstances makes me sick. I have nothing but compassion for this doctor.

Must be CJD, with all his lost credibility, spewing his “facts” again. “

I’m sure with your ample knowledge of the law, you at one time knew this but forgot, but nearly every state has a loser pays mechanism in their Rules of Civil Procedure.

Why would the court be reimbursed? Its expenses would exist whether that one case was there or not?

I know you can’t tell the difference between facts and opinions or speculation, but do try and at least have a basic understanding of what you speak of.

But will they….no of course not.

Just like “loser pays”. In reality little more than a fanciful farce that is rarely invoked.

No lawyer or judge should retain any immunity or barrier to tort claims. Laws are needed to end all lawyer and judge self-dealt immunities. These are unconscionable. To deter.

In this case, the lawyer violated a rule of evidence. The judge failed to stop it or to call a mistrial and assign all legal cost to the careless plaintiff attorney. They should be forced to pay the doctor punitive damages for their misconduct. Big time.

Please explain. Does the loser reimburse the doctor, the doctor’s lawyer, and the court?

Must be CJD, with all his lost credibility, spewing his “facts” again.

1. We already have loser pays.

2. No one knows how much or how little defensive medicine costs.

3. As a result of #2, you can’t claim defensive medicine is the reason costs are “soaring”.

the dirty little secret of an American legal system is that anyone who feels wronged, or wants to feel wronged, for any reason, is protected from any risks you might think exist in bringing a lawsuit against another individual , that everyone is a victim at some point in time, and every circumstance has a victor and victim. Sure, frivolous cases may be thrown out fairly quickly(Although it didn’t in this particular case ) but that’s not the point. The point is you vindicated yourself by forcing your enemy to part with quite a bit of money. It’s a frightening amount of completely unchecked power the average citizen has .We can just wish strings of responsibility would be attached to this ‘power’ ,but that doesn’t seem to be the case. This notion that a losing plaintiff never has to pay flies in the face of the entire concept of a justice procedure which supposedly can assess a monetary loss caused by any action, and if necessary, require an offending party to compensate the “victimized” party for that loss.

We wish the bottom dwellers of any profession including medicine be priced out from the market . And Medical establishment doesn’t do that due to host of reasons including “lawsuits” , are appaling, but it can never legitimize that if almost every Obstetrician and almost half of the surgeons found to be sued and its corollary that somehow we are infested with butchers , the recourse is a lawyer like this cunning ‘return of the king’ baby, who would never be disciplined as well.

These common wisdom has been allowed to congeal based on a faulty assumption that if you threaten someone, they will improve their behavior, That might be true if someone is deliberately acting badly (we already know it doesn’t even work in criminal cases) ,but there are already enough professional and personal reasons for trying the best to help someone, no threat like that can improve anyone’s behavior. People who are trying their best are not made better by holding the “ Sword of Damocleis” of a lawsuit over them , What you do is you reduce their ability to concentrate at the task at hand and they actually perform worse .

Any enterprise as complicated as medicine is bound to have errors How hard one may try . I prefer to focus my wrath on a system that, in my opinion, does more to enrich the middlemen than help those who suffer from those errors or reduce future errors

loser pays, A good place to start not ,as someone once said “thousand of lawyers at the bottom of the sea”

It certainly is not an efficient use of resources, and I certainly would support changes: (a) pre-trial screening panels; (b) even special courts; and/or (c) switching to a standard of avoidability or preventability instead of a standard of negligence.

At the end of the day, the ultimate vindication may have to come at trial because no system will be perfect.

Ultimately, if doctors would regulate themselves better, rather than circling the wagons, everyone would be better off.

Reform (or even dialogue) is very difficult when doctors reflexively react like petulant children whenever the topic is malpractice and liability (stupid lawyers telling us how to do our job).

One step would be for doctors to take action against the small proportion of doctors with multiple judgments against them, who drive up the cost of insurance, and who do a disservice to the integrity of their profession.

Apply basic risk management techniques and empirical risk analysis, like anestheiology. The first step is to stop blaming malpractice itself on trial lawyers or uneducated layfolk.

Yes, medical intervention is inherently variable and the most appropriate course of action is seldom balck-and-white. But preventable mistakes and blatant professional sloppiness are simply unacceptable and much more common and costly (in health and dollars) than “lawsuit abuse.”