Jury System gone nuts...again

[Arvon]

Widow Maggie Smith and her two adult children won $1.2 million late in 2002 (reduced from an August jury award of $3.5 million) in their wrongful death lawsuit against Dr. Franklin Price, having convinced a jury that Price did not do enough to help the late Lawrence Smith avoid his fatal heart attack. Mr. Smith, of University Heights, Ohio, was 54, overweight, a long-time smoker who ate a poor diet, got little exercise, had diabetes and high cholesterol, and admitted to being stressed at work; Dr. Price said he gave Smith repeated admonitions about his bad habits, but apparently not enough of them. [Cleveland Scene, 2-12-03; Plain Dealer, 8-20-02]

And people wonder why doctors are calling it quits. You think health care is bad now..wait till the number of doctors drops a few percent points when they get fed up with $200,000 and $300,000 malpractice insurance costs. Makesme wonder if professional juries might be better.....after all a doctor should be judged by someone competent in the field....Oh and is there ANYONE who can claim they don't know that smoking and being obese isn't bad for them?

[harleyquinn]

Originally posted by MagiK: Oh and is there ANYONE who can claim they don't know that smoking and being obese isn't bad for them?

Yes, everyone on the board at the tabacco companies.

It's too bad that good doctors are having to suffer the high costs because of those bad doctors. Perhaps if stronger restrictions and rules were put into place to remove those bad doctors from being able to continue practicing, the good ones would not have to pay the rediculously high premiums.
I feel your pain, my car insurance just went up 25%. Not because of anything I did, but because of all the insurance fraud in NY, the health care costs going up, and the insurance companies being greedy.

[Arvon]

Where the hell is personel responsibility? Does every one just sit back and allow the nanny state to take care of anything?

[Timber Loftis]

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."

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.

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."

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.

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.

Aha! Here's the truth of it. Happens all the time.

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.'"

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.

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. ************* 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."

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 ]

[Arvon]

I'll grant that when the doc does something wrong he should be nailed. But more than a settlement , he should be defrocked. If the doc had left his tool in the guy, or had given the wrong medicine that's one thing. Remember medicine is an art, not a science. The doc shouldn't get two chances to kill someone. (By the way I feel the same for lawyers too). The problem is the oversight committee won't can the bad docs.

But come on in this case... a college prof., no less, had to know being fat, smoking and rotten life style was going to kill him. This information has been available for the last 30-40 years. This was just going for the deep pockets.

[WillowIX]

Although you make some good points Timber you forget one universal truth. Doctors are human! Cut down enough on health care and a specialist won´t have time to attend to a patient. Now the malpractice lawsuits in AMerica is IMO beyond ridiculous. If the result is not the expected it is malpractice. Not that this was the case in this particular story. But somewhere a line has to be drawn or MagiK´s predictions will come through. Of course there are doctors who are in the profession for money, but MOST, and I do believe this is a very high percentage, are doctors to make a difference. It´s very hard to keep your motivation with lawsuits on every bad result.

[Kakero]

now, that's just have given me a very evil intention of making fast money. doctors beware! [img]tongue.gif[/img]

Again I ask, was the doctor tried by a jury of his peers? or was he tried by the peers of a deceased obese smokers peers? See why I think that perhaps professional Jurries might be an answer...I think they would be less likely to make the ridiculous award and more likely to crack down on the truely incompetant and guilty.

[lethoso]

Originally posted by MagiK: Again I ask, was the doctor tried by a jury of his peers? or was he tried by the peers of a deceased obese smokers peers? See why I think that perhaps professional Jurries might be an answer...I think they would be less likely to make the ridiculous award and more likely to crack down on the truely incompetant and guilty.

professional juries would create as many problems as they solved. What they need is to make jury service much harder to avoid, over here pretty much the only ones who actually serve on juries are unemployed & others who don't have any signicant obligations... this puts a massive skew on the way decisions turn out....

also, anyone know what "Disable Graemlins in this post." checkbox does?