Malpractice defense lawyers: Do they lead physicians astray?

April 6, 2007

Scary claim. The physicians who lost a record malpractice case says their insurance-appointed lawyers coached them to tell lies:

In the doctors’ suit against their former malpractice lawyers, they claim that the lawyers who were hired by their malpractice insurance company were protecting the interest of the insurance company and not theirs. One of the doctors said he was pressured by the lawyers to say that he always gave a patient a physical exam and a patient history even if such an examination was previously performed by a physician’s assistant. This doctor said he did not perform physicals on patients who had already been seen by a physician’s assistant and that he did not remember personally examining the patient who sued him for malpractice. In spite of being informed by the doctors of the truth, the insurance company’s lawyers continued denying that anyone except the doctor was involved in the patient’s care and treatment.



Related posts:

  1. How malpractice suits affect physicians
  2. Suing your doctor
  3. Doctors and lawyers agree on a malpractice bill
  4. Health care today: Payment and fear of malpractice takes priority
  5. Lawyers "going bare" in California
  6. Some lawyers say defensive medicine isn’t real, but this doctor shows us otherwise
  7. How malpractice cases affect physicians emotionally


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{ 7 comments }

1 Anonymous April 6, 2007 at 11:26 am

The physician ought to sue the attorney and insurance firm for malpractice.

2 Anonymous April 6, 2007 at 11:51 am

This is exceedingly strange. The defense attorney I worked with was a stand up guy and an honest human being. The kind of behavior described here I once witnessed in an inner city real estate attorney.

3 Anonymous April 6, 2007 at 12:47 pm

There has to be more to this story. I do claims for a medmal insurer and if any of our defense attorneys did something like that, I would fire them immediately and would never rehire them again. Also, these action clearly contravene legal ethics, and all the defense and plaintiff counsel I have worked with for over 25 years have acted ethically. Having said that, it is a big country, and there is ethical variation amongst attorneys, just as there is amongst physicians or any other profession.

4 Anonymous April 7, 2007 at 11:10 am

I thought only plaintiffs and their attorneys did bad things?

5 Anonymous April 7, 2007 at 2:54 pm

“There has to be more to this story.”

I would bet the part you’re not hearing is that the doctors DID lie, and now they’re trying to blame it on someone else because the jury didn’t buy it.

6 Anonymous April 7, 2007 at 3:48 pm

Actually, the defense attorneys were probably former plaintiffs attorneys who thought a high hourly wage was preferable to rolling the dice now that the public has gotten wise to their shenanigans.

7 Anonymous April 7, 2007 at 4:52 pm

Was the public never not wise?

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