4 ms·

Can someone really sue their surgeon in the US?

agumonkey 8y ago
I can't recall what countries these guys were.
KMag 8y ago
Absolutely. You can sue for pretty much anything. Winning is another story, but doctor's don't generally make sympathetic defendants. Juries know they have money and that they pay huge insurance fees to cover these cases. Of course, after losing a big case where the insurance company pays out millions of dollars, they likely become uninsurable and unemployable. But hey, the money is good until you hit the anti-lottery. My father was an anesthesiologist (who retired in good standing), and I remember him telling me a case he read about a Caesarean section. The surgeon was using an electrocautery pen to sear closed the ends of blood vessels. The surgeon set down the pen on the surgical cart, lifted the baby out, set the baby on the cart, and the baby's heel touched the pen. Now the baby has a small scar on the bottom of his/her heel for life. The parents sued the surgeon, the cart nurse overseeing the cart, and the anesthesiologist was close to the surgical cart. All 3 defendants settled out of court, since babies almost always win jury cases against rich doctors, regardless of merit. The litigant's lawyer would almost certainly bring up a below median survival rate as evidence of a pattern of gross incompetence. Also, of course, in the U.S., I believe only governments are immune to lawsuits (sovereign immunity) without their consent. The courts have consistently ruled that many rights, including the right to sue, cannot be legally waived by contract. In a similar way, if you sell yourself into slavery by entering into a contract that waives your right against unlawful detention, that contract cannot be legally enforced. My grandfather was an anesthesiologist. My dad was an anesthesiologist (and did well enough on the MCAT to go to med school after 3 years of undergrad... practiced medicine without an undergrad degree... med school is too competitive today to do such a thing). I was a good student: I graduated from MIT. However, my brother and I saw all of the BS and stress (anesthesiologists have a high suicide rate) and constantly rotating sleep/work shifts and both went into engineering.
- llamaz 8y ago
  Let me guess, your heritage is Indian or Pakistani?
- lopmotr 8y ago
  If he really had a pattern of gross incompetence, wouldn't there have been some other process to stop him doing that? Are courts really that incompetent themselves that they can't understand such simple statistical errors as using survival rate to measure competence?
  - KMag 8y ago
    It's not about gross incompetence; it's about a jury's perception of incompetence, colored by their perception of the doctor and their perception of the grieving family members. If it comes to a jury trial, the court relies on the jury to make legally factual findings, so the courts end up relying upon the statistical abilities of the median juror, colored by the aforementioned biases. There are medical boards to remove incompetent doctors, but those influence jury trials primarily through submissions of findings as evidence for consideration by juries. A good lawyer will portray medical boards as a bunch of doctors biased against passing judgement on fellow doctors.
michaelmrose 8y ago
If you undergo a procedure whereby you could die it doesn't mean every cadaver is a paycheck. It means that if your death is a consequence of negligence or malfeasance that family has a recourse. This is entirely reasonable and I cannot imagine how you could have a medical system where you can't? What do you do if your surgeon operates drunk and kills you? Hope that a bunch of other doctors don't close ranks and protect their own at your expense? Why would anyone have any faith in their fellow man. People are terrible.
- DanBC 8y ago
  > What do you do if your surgeon operates drunk and kills you? Can you see that this introduces a level of recklessness that isn't present in the parents question? Parent is asking about normal death by medical error. That's likely to have complex causes and is rarely as simple as "doctor was negligent". But assuming that a doctor does kill someone: most relatives don't want a pay out. They want to know that this mistake won't happen again; that people and the orgnisation have learnt from the death; and they want an explanation of what went wrong along with an apology.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

I can't recall what countries these guys were.

KMag 8y ago

Absolutely. You can sue for pretty much anything. Winning is another story, but doctor's don't generally make sympathetic defendants. Juries know they have money and that they pay huge insurance fees to cover these cases. Of course, after losing a big case where the insurance company pays out millions of dollars, they likely become uninsurable and unemployable. But hey, the money is good until you hit the anti-lottery. My father was an anesthesiologist (who retired in good standing), and I remember him telling me a case he read about a Caesarean section. The surgeon was using an electrocautery pen to sear closed the ends of blood vessels. The surgeon set down the pen on the surgical cart, lifted the baby out, set the baby on the cart, and the baby's heel touched the pen. Now the baby has a small scar on the bottom of his/her heel for life. The parents sued the surgeon, the cart nurse overseeing the cart, and the anesthesiologist was close to the surgical cart. All 3 defendants settled out of court, since babies almost always win jury cases against rich doctors, regardless of merit. The litigant's lawyer would almost certainly bring up a below median survival rate as evidence of a pattern of gross incompetence. Also, of course, in the U.S., I believe only governments are immune to lawsuits (sovereign immunity) without their consent. The courts have consistently ruled that many rights, including the right to sue, cannot be legally waived by contract. In a similar way, if you sell yourself into slavery by entering into a contract that waives your right against unlawful detention, that contract cannot be legally enforced. My grandfather was an anesthesiologist. My dad was an anesthesiologist (and did well enough on the MCAT to go to med school after 3 years of undergrad... practiced medicine without an undergrad degree... med school is too competitive today to do such a thing). I was a good student: I graduated from MIT. However, my brother and I saw all of the BS and stress (anesthesiologists have a high suicide rate) and constantly rotating sleep/work shifts and both went into engineering.

llamaz 8y ago
Let me guess, your heritage is Indian or Pakistani?
lopmotr 8y ago
If he really had a pattern of gross incompetence, wouldn't there have been some other process to stop him doing that? Are courts really that incompetent themselves that they can't understand such simple statistical errors as using survival rate to measure competence?
- KMag 8y ago
  It's not about gross incompetence; it's about a jury's perception of incompetence, colored by their perception of the doctor and their perception of the grieving family members. If it comes to a jury trial, the court relies on the jury to make legally factual findings, so the courts end up relying upon the statistical abilities of the median juror, colored by the aforementioned biases. There are medical boards to remove incompetent doctors, but those influence jury trials primarily through submissions of findings as evidence for consideration by juries. A good lawyer will portray medical boards as a bunch of doctors biased against passing judgement on fellow doctors.

michaelmrose 8y ago

If you undergo a procedure whereby you could die it doesn't mean every cadaver is a paycheck. It means that if your death is a consequence of negligence or malfeasance that family has a recourse. This is entirely reasonable and I cannot imagine how you could have a medical system where you can't? What do you do if your surgeon operates drunk and kills you? Hope that a bunch of other doctors don't close ranks and protect their own at your expense? Why would anyone have any faith in their fellow man. People are terrible.

DanBC 8y ago
> What do you do if your surgeon operates drunk and kills you? Can you see that this introduces a level of recklessness that isn't present in the parents question? Parent is asking about normal death by medical error. That's likely to have complex causes and is rarely as simple as "doctor was negligent". But assuming that a doctor does kill someone: most relatives don't want a pay out. They want to know that this mistake won't happen again; that people and the orgnisation have learnt from the death; and they want an explanation of what went wrong along with an apology.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]