![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogI spent Thursday morning in court for close to two hours, ending when my little five-minute argument finally got called before the judge. (I won. It's not important.) Those remaining non-refundable 100-plus minutes of my life were reserved for a shitpile of medical malpractice cases that recently got reassigned to this particular judge's docket.
In one of the smarter moves in the legal profession, the state, at least, has tried some experiments with specializing cases with specific judges and their staff people. Domestic violence, matrimonial cases, and in my bailiwick commercial disputes have all been assigned to specialized "parts" where everyone gets more adept at the subject matter. Med-mal cases also got such an assignment, but the judge in charge of them recently got promoted to an appellate court and, in our byzantine system, that did not automatically open a trial-level slot. So the commercial part judge got the whole doctor docket dumped on him.
Any doctor, and any insurance ratepayer, who hears the endless complaints about the need for "tort reform" should spend an idle Thursday morning down in Part 4 of the old Erie County Hall court building downtown. For there you will see a spectacle of waste, and futility, and downright meanness on display. Not plaintiffs' attorneys beating up the doctors, or the doctors standing there saying that the dead or injured patients have no case. No, every case I waited through was a blame game, where everyone within a mile of the operating room, and the owner and operator of the O.R. itself, spent their time (and wasted mine) on attempt after attempt to blame one another for the injury rather than address the merits of who caused injury, and if so, and if any, how much.
Every one of these cases is ASSUMED to be appealed. (In my practice, fewer than five percent of court decisions are.) The judge spoke constantly of the bad things that would happen to the lawyers before him if he took their side because the appellate court would surely reverse him based on this principle or that prior court case. On more than one occasion, he greeted a defendant's lawyer by complimenting him or her on the tire tracks placed on their client's back by the prior defense lawyer(s) throwing their client(be it the doctor or the hospital, or the anaesthesiologist) under the bus. And there was plenty of rubber to burn as these defense-lawyer meters were spinning, in most cases, at a combined $1,000-$2,000 an hour, plus whatever checks they were writing outside the courtroom for their experts and exhibits, just to slow down the wheels of justice and prevent the victim from getting a day in court against everybody.
Not that I'm necessarily in favor of THAT, either. For the only other way these cases can go, in our Anglo system of alleged justice, is before a panel of six stupid people, four of them off-duty civil servants and all of them pissed that they had to be there, who get to turn on the bubble machines and pop out the Lawsuit Lottery winning numbers. Hell, I'm a 50-year old with two college degrees and a family full of living and dead medical professionals, and even I didn't know a sliver of what these lawyers were talking about. (Well, except for the case where the parents of an Amherst kid are suing the local public hospital and everyone within a mile of the treatment room in it, for putting a diagnosed schizophrenic with suicidal tendencies on Level I observation- the lowest level, checkups every 30 minutes- and leaving him in a room alone with an ample supply of bedsheets. I needn't tell you how THAT turned out.)
There are far better, and less expensive, of ways I can think of to get to the truth in these cases, which might increase the number of claims brought but might just as likely reduce the number of them which stick to the participants. A set of full-time panels, with representatives from all medical participants and laity, would be far better uses of resources than this endless go-rounding of passing some very expensive bucks.
Will anyone currently in the game ever allow it? Of course not.
Check back on June 10, my next appearance on my case with this judge. The summer bus schedules should be ready by then so I can report on the latest throwings.
In one of the smarter moves in the legal profession, the state, at least, has tried some experiments with specializing cases with specific judges and their staff people. Domestic violence, matrimonial cases, and in my bailiwick commercial disputes have all been assigned to specialized "parts" where everyone gets more adept at the subject matter. Med-mal cases also got such an assignment, but the judge in charge of them recently got promoted to an appellate court and, in our byzantine system, that did not automatically open a trial-level slot. So the commercial part judge got the whole doctor docket dumped on him.
Any doctor, and any insurance ratepayer, who hears the endless complaints about the need for "tort reform" should spend an idle Thursday morning down in Part 4 of the old Erie County Hall court building downtown. For there you will see a spectacle of waste, and futility, and downright meanness on display. Not plaintiffs' attorneys beating up the doctors, or the doctors standing there saying that the dead or injured patients have no case. No, every case I waited through was a blame game, where everyone within a mile of the operating room, and the owner and operator of the O.R. itself, spent their time (and wasted mine) on attempt after attempt to blame one another for the injury rather than address the merits of who caused injury, and if so, and if any, how much.
Every one of these cases is ASSUMED to be appealed. (In my practice, fewer than five percent of court decisions are.) The judge spoke constantly of the bad things that would happen to the lawyers before him if he took their side because the appellate court would surely reverse him based on this principle or that prior court case. On more than one occasion, he greeted a defendant's lawyer by complimenting him or her on the tire tracks placed on their client's back by the prior defense lawyer(s) throwing their client(be it the doctor or the hospital, or the anaesthesiologist) under the bus. And there was plenty of rubber to burn as these defense-lawyer meters were spinning, in most cases, at a combined $1,000-$2,000 an hour, plus whatever checks they were writing outside the courtroom for their experts and exhibits, just to slow down the wheels of justice and prevent the victim from getting a day in court against everybody.
Not that I'm necessarily in favor of THAT, either. For the only other way these cases can go, in our Anglo system of alleged justice, is before a panel of six stupid people, four of them off-duty civil servants and all of them pissed that they had to be there, who get to turn on the bubble machines and pop out the Lawsuit Lottery winning numbers. Hell, I'm a 50-year old with two college degrees and a family full of living and dead medical professionals, and even I didn't know a sliver of what these lawyers were talking about. (Well, except for the case where the parents of an Amherst kid are suing the local public hospital and everyone within a mile of the treatment room in it, for putting a diagnosed schizophrenic with suicidal tendencies on Level I observation- the lowest level, checkups every 30 minutes- and leaving him in a room alone with an ample supply of bedsheets. I needn't tell you how THAT turned out.)
There are far better, and less expensive, of ways I can think of to get to the truth in these cases, which might increase the number of claims brought but might just as likely reduce the number of them which stick to the participants. A set of full-time panels, with representatives from all medical participants and laity, would be far better uses of resources than this endless go-rounding of passing some very expensive bucks.
Will anyone currently in the game ever allow it? Of course not.
Check back on June 10, my next appearance on my case with this judge. The summer bus schedules should be ready by then so I can report on the latest throwings.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-03-21 12:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-21 01:25 am (UTC)Congrats on the win.