Greedy Trial Lawyer
Let The Shunning Begin
Category: In Your Face
In the latest effort to enable doctors to shun patients who sue, an offshore company has launched an Internet site that lists the names of plaintiffs who have filed medical malpractice cases in Florida and their attorneys.
This development, reported at Web Site Encourages Blacklist of Med-Mal Plaintiffs, has opened the door for a website I have been contemplating for some time. I would call it TerribleTreatment.com (if that name is still available.) On it would be posted the medical expert reviews finding clear evidence of terrible medical care that did not lead to the filing of a medical malpractice case. My estimate would be that for every medical malpractice case that is filed more than 10 other cases of documented terrible care are reviewed. The declined terrible care cases are not pursued as lawsuits because of the legal and economic barriers that have been erected to protect the medical profession from itself.
The public should be able to shun doctors who provide terrible medical care.
More about the patient shunning website:
The site, LitiPages.com, encourages doctors to consider avoiding patients who are listed in the database, and it strongly encourages plaintiffs who have lost their cases at trial to turn around and sue their plaintiffs attorney."If your attorney proceeded with a lawsuit without warning you of the risks involved, you may be the victim of Legal Malpractice and may be entitled to compensation," the site states.
The new Web site is likely to trigger a fresh round of acrimony between doctors and plaintiffs lawyers in their long-running war over medical malpractice litigation. Plaintiffs lawyers and medical ethics experts say the LitiPages.com site is unethical.
Andrew Yaffa, a plaintiffs attorney at Grossman Roth Olin Meadow Cohen Yaffa Pennekamp & Cohen in Boca Raton, Fla., called the site "disgusting." Yaffa said "it's a devious attempt to intimidate people from pursuing their rights."
The registered operator of the Web site, Medico-Judicial Online Media, has begun gathering data on Florida medical malpractice cases filed after July 4, said company spokesman Vishal Castun. The operators plan to make the database available for free starting next July, and eventually hope to publish a database covering medical malpractice cases across the United States.
Castun said the site does not take any formal position on whether doctors should screen out patients based on whether they are listed in the database. The Web site will simply "report the news," he said.
But the language on the site clearly encourages doctors to avoid such patients.
The Web site suggests that doctors also should consider refusing elective care to plaintiffs attorneys who bring the medical malpractice cases that did not result in plaintiff verdicts.
Bill Allen, program director for the University of Florida medical school's bioethics, law and medical professionalism program, said the site treads on thin ethical ice.
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