Litigation of civil liability proceedings and its respective indemnification judgments against dental surgeons in the Court of Justice of the state of Paraná
Authors: Fernanda Tiboni  , Izabele Baier  , Hildegard Giostri  , Wellington Zaitter  , Eliene Imano Otta  
Published: April 2021

The dental surgeon, which is a health professional, besides the responsibility common to all people as a citizen, also assumes a specific responsibility: to answer for the acts committed in the exercise of the profession. The so-called professional responsibility involves a fourfold framework: criminal, civil, administrative and ethical. With the greater access of the population to justice, it is not uncommon to know of a dental surgeon who is being fired by a patient and civilly responsible. In this sphere, the professional can be condemned due to his conduct during the treatment being classified as: Negligent, Imprudent and Malpractice. Conviction for any of these conducts, or even the combination of more than one of them conducts monetary reimbursement. These are the so-called material, moral and aesthetic indemnities. Objective: Observe how many processes were judged in the Court of Justice of the State of Paraná (TJPR) between 1995 and 2018 and to establish a default value for civil liability actions against dentists. Material and methods: We conducted a search on the TJPR website of all civil liability cases against dental surgeon tried in second instance between 1995 and July 2018 using pre-established keywords and including all judgments in the statistic results. Results: Between 1995 and 2018 there was an increase of 3.420% in the number of shares. The majority of material damages are below 15,000 reais, moral damage 13,000 and aesthetic damage 3,000 reais. The medium indemnified value was 4.142 reais. Conclusion: We observed the high degree of incidence of this type of process and that the highest indemnity was about material injury. However moral injuries got the highest medium value, showing the importance of human care.

The dental surgeon, which is a health professional, besides the responsibility common to all people as a citizen, also assumes a specific responsibility: to answer for the acts committed in the exercise of the profession. The so-called professional responsibility involves a fourfold framework: criminal, civil, administrative and ethical. With the greater access of the population to justice, it is not uncommon to know of a dental surgeon who is being fired by a patient and civilly responsible. In this sphere, the professional can be condemned due to his conduct during the treatment being classified as: Negligent, Imprudent and Malpractice. Conviction for any of these conducts, or even the combination of more than one of them conducts monetary reimbursement. These are the so-called material, moral and aesthetic indemnities. Objective: Observe how many processes were judged in the Court of Justice of the State of Paraná (TJPR) between 1995 and 2018 and to establish a default value for civil liability actions against dentists. Material and methods: We conducted a search on the TJPR website of all civil liability cases against dental surgeon tried in second instance between 1995 and July 2018 using pre-established keywords and including all judgments in the statistic results. Results: Between 1995 and 2018 there was an increase of 3.420% in the number of shares. The majority of material damages are below 15,000 reais, moral damage 13,000 and aesthetic damage 3,000 reais. The medium indemnified value was 4.142 reais. Conclusion: We observed the high degree of incidence of this type of process and that the highest indemnity was about material injury. However moral injuries got the highest medium value, showing the importance of human care.