It sets parent against parent, doctor against patient. It exploits the bereavement that some day awaits the survivors of us all and turns it to an unending source of poisonous recrimination. It torments the provably innocent and rewards the palpably irresponsible. It is the special American burden, the one feature hardly anyone admires of a society that is otherwise envied the world around. Medicine falls victim Personal injury litigation was first to be transformed.
Most malpractice lawsuits have nothing to do with genuine negligence.
Preliminary figures from a new and exhaustive study by Harvard researchers indicate that in four out of five lawsuits filed, the care given was not in fact negligent. And as the legal firestorm sweeps through the profession, patients as a group are being left worse off, not better. The study also found that one in five rural doctors had stopped delivering babies in the past five years, with liability the overwhelming concern. By 1990 litigation over birth defects had emerged as a source of immensely profitable business for trial lawyers. They gain access to registries of handicapped children, approach the families, and propose filing a lawsuit.