| Timber Loftis |
04-29-2003 02:18 PM |
Quote:
From: http://www.clevescene.com/issues/200...l/1/index.html
The Smith case hinged on whether Price, an internist with two Cleveland offices, should have sent Smith to a heart specialist. The plaintiff's lone expert, Dr. Stephen Glasser, testified that an early referral was needed and could have kept Smith on this side of the grass.
A physician at the University of Minnesota, Glasser declines to talk about the suit. But he says too many doctors offer only the bluntest of advice to patients: "You're overweight -- lose weight." When that fails, he adds, "Physicians give up."
Ralph Hale, one of six jurors who voted for the verdict, suspects that happened to Smith. "He was going to the doctor regularly, he did everything he could. The doctor obviously missed something."
Price declined comment. . .
Price, who rejected a $1 million settlement demand before trial, hurt his own cause in court, turning petulant under cross-examination. Weinberger says jurors sniffed out the truth behind the doctor's testiness -- and handed Smith's family what they deserved.
"Juries have a real good sense of what's right and wrong in malpractice cases," the lawyer says. "We have pro athletes who make millions of dollars. Giving $3.5 million to a hard-working family man who has two kids and a wife didn't seem like a lot to the jury. I agree."
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The good Dr. screwed the pooch twice: (1) waited years before recommending a heart specialist - and then the recommendation came only 2 months prior to death, and (2) got beligerant on the stand (anyone remember the "God Complex" from the movie "Malice"?).
I may not like the verdict either, but let's look at all facts before we assume anything. Looks like the Doctor shot himself in the foot.
Quote:
The jury's two dissenting members believe Smith's vices claimed his life -- along with Price's reputation. One of them, Morris Blatt, wrote to defense lawyers, alleging that the other six jurors let their emotions obscure the evidence and that Smith "abused himself."
A judge denied Price's request to include the note in his pending appeal. But malpractice attorneys say it's the first time they can recall a juror attempting to enter written frustrations into the court record. Allyson Cooley, who sided with Blatt, says she was tempted to follow suit. "[Smith] didn't try to change. He didn't fix his diet, he didn't exercise, he started smoking again. But the widow was looking to place blame, and Dr. Price was the closest one."
In his closing argument, John Martin, Weinberger's co-counsel, suggested Smith bore no liability for his death: "It's absurd for anybody to come into this courtroom and say, Lawrence Smith would be alive today if he stopped smoking, if he had lost weight . . . The doctor let him down."
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What a crap closing argument. But, again, look to the jurors "emotions." I'll bet that it's more about loathing for an arrogant doctor than about sympathy for a fatass smoker.
Quote:
Following a week-long trial, the Smith jury took only two hours to deliver a verdict on a Friday afternoon. Blatt and Cooley contend other jurors rushed the decision to avoid returning to the courthouse on Monday.
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Aha! Here's the truth of it. Happens all the time.
Quote:
Not so, Hale says. He insists deliberations were brief for the simple reason that "there wasn't much to talk about -- a man died." But while judges instruct juries to think of a courtroom as a no-pity zone, sympathy can swallow logic in malpractice cases, Olson says. "The experts from each side generally end up canceling each other out, so the jury thinks, 'Well, here we have someone who's lost a loved one. Let's award her a judgment.'"
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Unfortunately too true. Doctor's are rich and powerful, and the real reasons these verdicts come down against them is most folks would prefer to see them fall and some poor widow rise. It satisfies the juror's inner sense of drama, too, something which we are certainly succeptible to as a society.
Quote:
The Smith verdict represented one of a handful of malpractice awards that topped $1 million in Ohio last year. State and national figures reveal that, for all the headlines about "runaway" jury verdicts, judgments have plateaued, while doctors win about 70 percent of cases. Yet last month, Governor Bob Taft signed a tort-reform law that caps non-economic damages at $350,000 in most medical injury suits.
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Senator Eric Fingerhut offers a similar take. The Cleveland Democrat has drafted three bills to rein in medical insurers, whom he regards as the black hats in the tort-reform standoff. Capping how much juries can award, he says, represents the worst kind of elitism.
"For all the times juries find in favor of doctors, I trust them in the much smaller number of cases where they find for plaintiffs."
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And, here's the real tragedy. A few bad decisions out of many, and we enact sweeping tort reforming, again giving the powerful more power and the weak less recourse.
How come no one bitches about the numerous medmal suits where plaintiffs are goaded into settling for $5 or $10K for the death of a loved one that was actually the doctor's fault or where the doctor wins outright. [img]graemlins/1ponder.gif[/img] Oh, I know why no one bitches about that: those plaintiffs either have signed gag agreements or simply have no voice.
While one decision may be bad, let's not hang the whole system out to dry. In any system the law of averages rears its ugly head from time to time, showing us bad results. That does not mean the whole system is defunct.
[ 04-29-2003, 02:19 PM: Message edited by: Timber Loftis ] |
