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Malpractice suits protect the public
Elizabeth F. Kuniholm
Point of View — RALEIGH — If I believed everything I read, I might think that personal injury lawyers as a group, and medical malpractice lawyers in particular, were an itinerant band of marauders out to get the angels of society (doctors and other fine businesspersons) by ruining their reputation, taking their money and forcing them to perform unnecessary tests on their well patients.
This does not describe me, although I am a malpractice lawyer, nor does it describe the fast majority of the hard-working, dedicated and tender-hearted lawyers I know who have devoted their professional lives to helping and representing people injured by the negligence of others.
If I believed all doctors were like the doctors described to me by some of my clients, I might believe that all doctors paid no attention tot their patients' obvious symptoms, were arrogant beyond belief, would just as soon lie as give the time of day or, worse, popped pills or took a drink back in the doctors' lounge before coming out to do surgery on the wrong leg.
This is not most doctors, for most doctors care passionately for their patients, stay hours longer at the hospital to make sure their patients are safe and worry incessantly whether the medication they have chosen is right or whether another test might give them the clue that will diagnose a mysterious ailment.
Why is it that doctors label as evil a legal system that holds them responsible if they harm someone when they give care that fails to meet even the most minimal of the standards of their profession? Why is it that doctors blame the lawyers and the patients if they are made to answer for injuries or death caused by their failure to live up to their Hippocratic oath: "First, do no harm"? Are doctors somehow different or better that the rest of us, that they should be excused and protected when their negligence causes harm?
Our legal system is our protector, and it is our voice for safety. By holding a wrongdoer, doctor or non-doctor, responsible in damages for injuries caused by negligence, the system makes us all more careful and places the burden where it should rightly lie < on the person responsible. Safety is sometimes chose only when the consequences of not doing so are known and sure. And when the caution is ignored, a punitive lesson will make behavior change.
But how does our legal system become accessible to the people hurt by the negligence of others, including those hurt by the malpractice of some doctors? Can the widow with two young children to support pay a lawyer $150 or $200 per hour for thousands of hours to try to recover compensation for them from a physician who ignored the clear and deadly signs of heart attack in her 45-year-old husband and sent him home to die?
Clearly not. If she could find justice only by paying a lawyer to take on the system, it would never happen. There would be no consequence for the careless doctor, indifferent hospital or cost-cutting HMO, and there would be many more needless deaths and injuries. Contingent fees open the courthouse doors for ordinary people. Contingent fees are nothing more than what they seem: the lawyer is paid only if she wins. A lawyer who pursues a frivolous case for a client doesn't get paid. The last time I checked, a percentage of zero was zero. Last time I checked, my staff will not work for free, nor are my office space, furniture, books, telephone, computer system, fax machine or copier donated by a generous benefactor.
To help that widow with two children to support, I must be sure before I file a lawsuit on her behalf that in fact the doctor who sent her husband home should have recognized the symptoms of a heart attack and should have admitted him, tested him and given him heart-attack medicine. I must also be sure that if that doctor had done those things, her husband would be alive today.
Only then will I file a lawsuit to hold the doctor responsible for this family's loss. Another doctor must tell me those things, and I am required by law before I file a lawsuit to have that opinion from a doctor willing to testify to it in court. And only if I recover damages for her and for her young children will I be paid.
I can tell you right now, I won't be filing cases that don't meet those criteria. Seems like a pretty fair system to me.
So after all is said and done, why would I want to be part of a group of people who seem more reviled than the lowest of the low: personal injury lawyers?
Because I have seen the gratitude in the eyes of parents who through the legal system finally have the means to ensure that their child who suffered devastating injuries at the hands of a careless doctor will be taken care of after the parents die.
Because I have seen changes in hospital procedures after a hospital is held responsible for injuries caused by its negligent policies.
Because I feel that my work makes a difference in the lives of ordinary people.
That is why I am proud to be a personal injury lawyer.