Sunday, May 29, 2011

Alternatives to "Life After a Lawsuit"

The AMA is a trip. This article describes helplessness and victimhood. It says nothing about another side of being sued for malpractice. That is the duty to protect clinical care from the vicious predators coming at it from all sides, including hate filled, scapegoating, entitled, greedy plaintiffs, who are real scum.

Some Perspectives

Doctors are Spoiled and Nearly Immune from Tort Liability

1) Say a practice makes $5 million a year. It gets all upset if it has four lawsuits of any kind. If it were a $5 million welding business, it would have 400 lawsuits all the time, permanently, as long as in business.  A large business, such a s Walmart, has 10,000 lawsuits at all times. This predatory practice is a huge heavy anchor on our economy, where a criminal cult enterprise, the lawyer profession, has total control of government, and uses it to enrich and empower itself by plundering all productive entities. This criminal cult knows doctors are crazy and violent once angered, so they stay away, mostly. (See Al Qaida, the Cuban Revolution, Ethnic Cleansing in Serbia,  for examples of doctors getting angry.) Doctors are a privileged group, almost immune.

2) When a lawsuit is filed, it fails at a rate of 80% at every stage of litigation. So, the smallest fraction of claims ever reach trial. Once at trial, jurors like doctors and give them the benefit of the doubt. Even in judicial hellholes, the verdicts favor doctors 75% of the time.

3) When spectacular losses make the newspaper, they are misleading. Baby makes $58 million, the headline may say. Baby really makes almost nothing is the reality. They baby will get the limit of insurance, such as $2 million. After the lawyer has taken out expenses and contingency fees, only a pittance is left for the baby. Greedy, low life parents are often shocked by this principle of no "Blood Money."

The Doctor has No Friend in Court Save the Jury

1) The defense lawyer is a traitor working only for himself. He will always want to get to trial because that is the only way to make a profit on a medical malpractice defense. He will allow his client to go through the wringer in a frivolous case to generate the profits from the rial. He does not need the client. He will never do anything that might scare, deter, or even inconvenience the plaintiff bar. He will never go after a biased judge. These are all duties to the client.

2) The doctor must hire, at his own expense,  a legal malpractice specialist to terrorize the insurance provided defense lawyer, looking out only for himself, and always orchestrating the case so a trial happens to enrich himself. There should be no pity shown this traitor. The malpractice lawyer must force the defense lawyer to file for motions to dismiss, for motions to disqualify  the lawyers, the judges, and the experts. Try to destroy the case as early as possible.

3) The process of discovery must brutalize all the enemies of clinical care, including the pro-lawyer biased judge, a hack, only slightly more morally upright than the felons passing thorugh his court. The judge is scum, and must not be spared any pain possible. Judges must come to pee their pants whenever a doctor enters the court, rather than the other way around. The judges are base cult criminals, sworn enemies to clinical care, scum who allow frivolous cases to proceed and refuse to punish irresponsible plaintiff lawyers. Demand all out e-discovery on the plaintiff, his entire family, the plaintiff lawyer for an improper motive, on all the named experts, and on the judge for his anti-doctor bias or pro-litigation bias. A full search for content in social networks should be done for all the adversaries.

This is  a proper motive for the tort claim: to make the plaintiff whole with money damages. Period. Every other utterance should result in a motion to dismiss, or to disqualify. For example, "It is not for the money." An improper motive. To prevent this from happening to others. To find out what happened. To send a message to the health care system. Any utterance indicating frustration or hate for the doctor. All improper motives. Use all appearances in the media as evidence of improper motive, since these are to get attention and notoriety, to embarrass the defendant into offering a settlement. All depositions should be relentless in their search for these case ending statements.

No Courtesies Nor Civility During the Trial

1) The malpractice lawyer must second guess every move or failure to make a move by the defense lawyer.

2) Ask the judge to question the jury in mid trial, whether any has used any electronic means to independently research any aspect of the parties or of the case. This is irresistible. It will be true at nearly every trial. Demand a mistrial and legal costs.

3) Use every utterance of every adversary, including those of the judge as a basis for many ethics complaints, using a specific Rule of Conduct from the applicable law covering professional ethics. This may generate dozens of complaints against the plaintiff lawyer, the experts, the judge. Generate dozens of investigations against each, so they all live in uncertainty, and not just the defendant, as in this article cited above. These investigations may have to be carried out for months after the end of the case. They have driven the targets from the field.

4) File cross claims against all other defendants. If one decides to settle, he will need your consent. You would not let anyone out unless they paid you or your wanted to. People will settle, and leave to suffer a trial alone. Do not allow that without thinking hard about it.

5) A doctor in the article sued the plaintiff and the lawyer for misuse of a civil procedure. This measure after the trial is a waste of time. The legal system is rigged airtight to encourage litigation and lawyer employment. One must possess proof in the form of a writing or recording of the lawyer confessing that the case was filed with knowledge of its lack of merit or confessing an improper motive. Impossible.

Alternative to the Misuse of a Civil Procedure after the Trial

The sole remedy to the frivolous claim must be found in the trial. The trial judge has limitless powers to punish the attorneys with costs, jail time, and seizure of personal assets, even dismissal of the case for misconduct (generating a legal malpractice case by the client). Make the defense lawyer traitor demand sanctions against the expert for any misstatement of facts (opinion is immune), against the plaintiff lawyer for misconduct (the doctor defendant should study the Rules of Civil Procedure to make informed demands of the defense lawyer.

6) The tort defendant has  procedural due process rights, the Supreme Court affirmed in reversing excessive punitive damages against an insurance company. One such right under is a right to a fair hearing. The defendant should take this list of biases, use it as a checklist, and see if any apply to the case, and demand a motion to dismiss if found (as early in the case as possible). Here is the list of biases.  The most important in medical malpractice are hindsight bias and outcome bias. The defendant may even blame himself and harbor an outcome bias against himself. This bias can be demonstrated to exist in defense experts. These are no more acceptable than other biases such as those against minorities.An argument using cognitive bias has never been made, let alone tested in a medical malpractice case, so the defense lawyer will resist it as having no precedent.

Deter the enemies of clinical care. Personal destruction has good moral validity. It is indeed a duty of the doctor defendant, to protect clinical care from its relentless enemies.