OPINION: FRIVOLOUS MEDICAL MALPRACTICE CASES DON'T MAKE IT TO TRIAL
"In my 53 years of practice, I have never seen
a frivolous medical malpractice case that has
made it to trial. It costs $250,000 to $300,000
to bring a case to trial. You just can't get
into the courtroom for less money than that.
And that money comes straight out of the
lawyer's pocket....Caps are not necessary
because every judge in the country has the
power to throw out every lawsuit before it gets
to a jury. I have never seen a frivolous lawsuit
in a malpractice action in 53 years. And there
isn't a single bit of evidence that there is any
frivolity going on - it is a lie....
There is a
crisis. There is no question about that. It is
a horrible crisis. It is the best guarded secret
in America. It is a crisis in medical
malpractice. If you are covering a crisis of a
profession that is causing as many deaths than
are caused by heart attacks and cancer, and you
want to cover that up, what do you do? You
create a crisis on the other side against the
people's lawyers who will fight for them....We
have to be careful not to do to the doctors what
the insurance industry has done to us.
Trial
lawyers are the fighters and the warriors for
the people of this country. There are a few
trial lawyers that we look at with disdain.
There are bad lawyers, just like there are bad
doctors. And if there are bad lawyers, they get
disbarred....What about bad doctors? Five
percent of the doctors in this country are
causing 55 percent of the payouts by insurance
companies. I was just reading this in the New
York Times. Of the 2,774 doctors who had made
payments in five or more malpractice cases, only
463 - one out of six was disciplined."
ATLA Member Gerry Spence, The Chattanoogan,
03/26/2005. For the complete story, see http://www.chattanoogan.com/articles/article_64607.asp
