Poll: Should a doctor blog his medical malpractice trial?

Whether the blabbing was done after the trial is immaterial; they can always be reopened with claims of new evidence. Open disclosure makes it easier in the next action. The insurance companies will see an opportunity to raise their rates based on markedly increased risks. And, not least, customers won’t take kindly to someone who can’t keep his mouth shut.
Chuck Brooks
FutureWare SCG

“In these litigious times”

These times aren’t actually that litigious. (Putting aside the fact that there is no baseline for what “non-litigious” times would be”) In fact, they’re less litigious, at least in personal injury cases, than they were even a decade ago. Businesses suing each other are believed to be up though.

Replying to supremacy Claus- Here we have quoted an unreferenced assertion that 80% of malpractice claims are weak. Though the numbers vary in each judicial jurisdiction,
insurance company data reveals 80% to 90% of the claims that reach the stage where appropriate experts have been secured by both sides are settled. They are settled for the most part because they are ligitimate claims. Of those claims that proceed to trial, 80% are lost not because they are weak, but because the plaintiff in every juristiction has the burden of proof and because of a years long effort to poison the jury pool by contending that victims are greedy and lawyers are unsavoury characters. In this country the right of ordinary citizens to complain they have beeen mistreat and that they have suffered serious harm is a constitutionally protected right shared by all persons, the powerful and the weak, the individual and the corporation. In most states (I reside in Pennsylvania) there is no pretrial publicity in the media surrounding the typical malpractice case unless circumstances are unusual such as an accidental poisoning wrong leg removed, etc.

There are more important things for us to discuss and this thread has departed substantially from the subject that prompted the discussion. However, you have misquoted me about a critical matter. I said “80% to 90% of the claims that reach the stage where appropriate experts have been secured by both sides are settled.” I agree that the over whelming majority of claims made are abandonned without payment. Neither the lawyer or client receive anything. With respect to the serious claims supported by experts and advanced by lawyers through discovery your informants at PMSLIC will tell you the overwhelming percentage of those cases are settled and are not nusance cases. Cases that are tried generally are tried because of conflicting facts or opinions that the jury is unable to resolve. This is not surprizing since the burden of persuation falls entirely on the Plain tiff.

You also arrive at an entirely unjustified conclusion that since so many cases are lost the creative plaintiff’s lawyer becomes succesfull by filing more cases. Such a practice would be extremely unrewarding and in no way helpful to victims with legitimate claims.

Successful malpractice lawyers want to identify the victims most in need of help in circumstances where a legal claim is likely to provide solutions for the many challenges such victims face. It is this approach that accoountsfor me having disappointed few clients in my thirty five year career.

Finally, this debate began with a legitimate question about the definition of defensive medicine and whether such practice contributes adversely to the cost of medical care.

Standards of medical practice are set by doctors and not lawyers. Appropriate standards of practice take into account the fact that appropriate practice produces many
negative results. Nevertheless negative results are an indispensible part of the process of differential diagnosis. For example, if by performing 1000 pap smears you can identify and permit curative treatment of a single case of carcinoma in situ you can save a life of a young woman for each $25000 spent. Of course the standard of practice recognizes that further costs need to be included involving the human and economic effects of false positives. This calculation, the value of a womans life, is made and acted upon by doctors performing within accepted parameters of practice, not lawyers.

i see your survey asks how scared i am of committing malpractice.

i have much less fear of committing malpractice than fear of a lay jury deciding that i committed malpractice after being led to believe so by an “expert” hired by the plaintiff’s lawyer to distort facts to suit their needs.

it’s an important distinction.