Causation: A Medico-Legal Battlefield

In the court room, the trial lawyer strives to introduce medical testimony as to the cause of a condition or disease. Resort in many instances is made, through a hypothetical question to a non-attending physician, as to whether or not the accident described was a competent cause of a later-described or assumed condition, or might, could, would, or was competent to have caused it. A great conflict exists in the various states as to the permissible range of inquiry in such cases, depending upon the particular jurisdiction\u27s interpretation of the requirement that medical opinions must be reasonably certain or reasonably probable

Rx for Malpractice

Every tragedy that becomes the subject of extensive coverage by the news media shortly turns into a focal point of malpractice litigation. This, of course, is inevitable and will ever be thus. Doctors for many years have been spoon fed stories and warnings about malpractice suits and hazards. Nothing, however, has been constructively advocated as to how this tide can be stemmed or what can be done in the face of it. Some years ago, Mark Twain wrote, Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. It is our objective in this article to not only alert the medical profession and the hospital administrators about the hazards of malpractice litigation, but in some measure to offer suggestions as to means and methods of avoiding such suits and their dire consequences

How to Handle an Anesthesia Injury Case

The criteria of competence of the trial lawyer handling a medical malpractice case is, does he have at least as much if not more knowledge of the practice and procedure involved in the case than the defendant physician. In no place is this more true than in the field of anesthesiology. This is not, of course, to suggest that the attorney can compete with the physician in practical experience. But, it is to propose that many valid anesthesia malpractice cases result in nonsuits and that plaintiff\u27s verdicts which are overturned on appeal are almost invariably lost due to insufficient evidence, which is primarily due to ineptness and the lack of thorough preparation by the attorney

Medical Arsenal of a Personal Injury Lawyer

It is amazing how little attention is paid by the trial lawyer to the enormous impact of traumatic injuries upon the human body. Generally, the trial lawyer is content with a woefully inadequate knowledge about the body, and the meaning of but a few medical terms. It is the purpose of this article to arouse the interest of those previously immune to the suggestions of the importance of a fuller knowledge of this subject and to point the way toward those wonderful repositories of information that should beknown by all. [Appended to these remarks is a bibliography of recommended books, pamphlets, paper backs, law reviews and medical journal articles.

Causation: A Medico-Legal Battlefield

In the court room, the trial lawyer strives to introduce medical testimony as to the cause of a condition or disease. Resort in many instances is made, through a hypothetical question to a non-attending physician, as to whether or not the accident described was a competent cause of a later-described or assumed condition, or might, could, would, or was competent to have caused it. A great conflict exists in the various states as to the permissible range of inquiry in such cases, depending upon the particular jurisdiction\u27s interpretation of the requirement that medical opinions must be reasonably certain or reasonably probable

Book Review

Reviewing Elliot L. Sagall and Barry C. Reed, The Heart and the Law, McMillan, 196