No "frivolous lawsuits".(LETTERS TO THE EDITOR)(Letter to the Editor)

Although I enjoyed the recent (September 5) issue on healthcare in the United States, I feel compelled to answer what I believe is an unfair and inaccurate attack on the U.S. tort system in general and on medical malpractice claimants and their lawyers in general.

During my over 20 years of legal practice in Utah, Nevada, California, and Arizona, I have represented doctors and patients in medical malpractice cases. In my experience, I have never seen one of the highly-touted "frivolous lawsuits" that insurance companies warn against. I have never represented a medical malpractice plaintiff whose claims I thought to be meritless, and I don't know anyone who has. Here's why. Medical malpractice claims are expensive to bring. They require a good deal of medical knowledge on the part of the lawyer, an investment in finding and paying for medical experts who are willing to testify, and a commitment to taking a case all the way to trial.

A medical malpractice lawyer knows at the outset that his case will be hard-fought by the doctor's insurance company, and that propaganda from insurers that plaintiffs are the cause of ever-increasing medical costs will not put a jury on the side of the injured patient. A medical malpractice lawyer simply can't afford to waste his time and money on a "frivolous" lawsuit. To the contrary, there's more money for a trial lawyer in pursuing easier, less costly types of cases, such as automobile accidents or product liability cases.

So, what's the truth about malpractice verdicts and ever-increasing medical costs? Insurance companies would have you believe that runaway juries, sympathetic to anyone who can hobble into the courtroom with a legal complaint in one hand and a cane in the other, will award millions at the drop of a hat. My experience is different. Due to various protections in the litigation system itself, the fact of the matter is that very few medical malpractice claims ever get to court. If they don't have merit, they are generally dismissed in a summary proceeding long before a jury could ever get a peek at them, and if, by some fluke, an outrageous award were to be given by a jury, a judge or an appellate court can always overturn such an award.

That leads to the inevitable question--why, then, are medical malpractice premiums going up, and what can be done about it? The answer to ...