What Is It Like To get Sued?
I think it is normal for professionals in any field to become accustomed to the processes and procedures we deal with every day. I think that phenomenon is particularly pronounced in the legal field. Most people have extremely limited experience with the workings of the court system in general, and with civil litigation in particular. The average citizen’s legal experience is most likely limited to serving jury duty, or appearing as a defendant in traffic court.
For example, I have often had clients seem surprised that I am usually quite friendly with the attorney representing the defendant in their personal injury case. To me, most of these lawyers are colleagues, law school classmates, or simply fellow professionals that I have gotten to know across the aisle at trials. They seem to believe that adversarial equates to hostile. This issue often arises in clients’ frustration with the pace (extremely slow) of litigation. People also seem to believe that the insurance company or defense attorney has a particular axe to grind against them, where I see that as business as usual.
This is an overly long intro to a blog that I have found to be great reading. There is an emergency department doctor who was sued for medical malpractice and is blogging about the course of his own trial (after the fact).
I think this is fascinating for several reasons. First, doctors are intelligent people who are mostly laypersons when it comes to the law. I think that provides a great outsider’s view of the system. Second, is the degree to which getting sued is taken personally, even by someone in a profession where being sued is commonplace. For example, this particular doctor is adamant he did nothing wrong, even though the first expert hand picked by his insurance carrier and defense attorney was of the opinion that the blogger was negligent. Did this prompt an apology and prompt payment to the victim? No. It prompted the insurer and defense attorney finding a new expert. Maybe the first expert was wrong. But this at least raises the idea that reasonable people can disagree, and does great harm to the idea that all lawsuits are frivolous. Third, I think reading the comments to the entries is very educational. There are always people, who despite their alarming lack of knowledge, hold very strong opinions. For example, a bad medical outcome does not always mean there was malpractice, but a losing plaintiff should be liable for the defendant’s fees and costs? Take a look and let me know what you think.
For what it’s worth, I think the writer sounds like a pretty reasonable guy who raises some good points. I even agree with some of what he says, and I’m an admittedly biased personal injury lawyer.
Comments
Actually, the first expert for the defense thought he exceeded the standard of care, not that he was negligent.
Posted by: BlackSails | July 7, 2009 12:34 PM
Thanks for reading the blog, but I think you have it backwards. Check out this quote fron Part Two:
"Vinny’s firm and the insurance company contacted me with the name of an expert that they had chosen to review the case. Everyone seemed impressed with his credentials. He was from a teaching program and his curriculum vitae was reportedly quite large. Hey, great, so if his testimony isn’t that good he can roll up his “CV” and smack the plaintiff’s expert around with it. Or we can use the CV for a doorstop during trial. Go for it.
The attorney sent the expert with the 5 pound CV a copy of all the medical records. Then the attorney, the insurance representative, and the expert with the 5 pound CV had a meeting to discuss my care. Other experts would review the care by the other doctors. This expert was focusing just on my care. I got a letter a couple of weeks later summarizing their discussions. The expert thought my care was negligent."
Expert #2 thought he exceeded the standard of care.
The only reason I raised the issue was to show that there can be differences of opinion between experts in the field. Basically, where the first defense expert agreed the care was negligent, there is at least a legitimate question of fact about what happened.
Posted by: John Bratt | July 7, 2009 12:41 PM
Doctors probably feel very different about lawsuits because I feel like medical malpractice suits are just exceptionally unique. What other profession can you go to work for a company and still get personally sued when there's been a "mistake"? I'll admit my knowledge of other professions is limited, but I bet if an engineer miscalculates something, it's his company that deals with the lawsuit, not himself. Moreover, cases seem exceptionally high in medicine. After all, what other field are bad outcomes often unforeseeable, unavoidable, and natural? Construction workers building a building don't expect the building to collapse because, every once in a while, it just does. However, every once in a while, a person will react differently to a drug, etc.
And yes, frivolous lawsuits are commonplace in all fields, including outside medicine, but those are usually either against faceless, often "soulless" corporations, rarely against good people who've done nothing wrong. Doctors are individuals with emotions, and it hurts us deeply to get sued when we've done nothing wrong. Can you blame us for wanting to at least make the loser pay legal fees? After all, if we clearly were in the wrong, you'd still file the suit. You'd only let that stop you if you don't believe your case was real.
Posted by: VK | July 8, 2009 4:55 PM