The current legal liability lottery in Illinois enriches trial lawyers and their well-paid experts and impedes our ability to construct a scientific, rational system to compensate for medically related injuries and unanticipated outcomes. This encourages frivolous lawsuits, increases health-care and liability premiums, and endangers your access to specialty care.

Do trial lawyers commit legal malpractice when they lose a trial (50 percent of cases have a loser)?

Most lawsuits stem from unanticipated outcomes or complications and not from negligent care. But if poor care occurs, we believe injured patients should receive fair compensation for medical and rehabilitation costs, child-care expenses, and lost wages. However, we believe there should be a limit on non-economic (pain and suffering) awards, which, by the way, is where trial attorneys get their windfall - in 2002 non-economic damages totaled 92 percent of jury awards.

We all lose when we allow a situation like this to continue. It's time we all work together to try to improve the health care of our community.

Patrick Daly, M.D., president, Winnebago County Medical Society

 

 

Dr. Daly's recent letter (Jan. 6) shows his complete contempt for patients, jurors (and the trial-by-jury system)and trial attorneys.

He says doctors support fair compensation for negligently injured patients, but only for economic losses. He supports a cap on non-economic damages like pain and suffering, disfigurement and disability. Apparently the quality of patients' lives is not worth fully compensating under the jury system upon which this country was founded.

He shows contempt for jurors because he wants to take the decision regarding fair compensation away from them, even though they're the only ones who hear all the evidence. Why is a doctor or a politician in a better position to determine fair compensation in a case that hasn't even happened yet?

Most clearly, he shows contempt for lawyers by calling their contingent fee a windfall! If it wasn't for the contingent fee agreement, average working people would never be able to afford to bring their grievances before a jury of their peers. Only doctors would be able to afford such a luxury. But maybe that's the real point.

 

I would prefer when someone insults my integrity that they properly introduce themselves. Mr. MacCloskey, as a plaintiffs’ trial lawyer you are entitled to your opinion, yet cheapen it with insults and misrepresentation of the facts. I reserve my contempt, as you put it, for those who abuse and profit from our justice system.

 

Because Dr Daly was responding to a letter directed toward him, the Register Star waived its one-per-30-day letters policy in this case.

  

Thanks to Dr. Daly for the plug. If standing up for injured people against the rich and powerful is an abuse of the justice system, then it's a badge of honor I will proudly wear until the day I die.

G. Kimball MacCloskey, B.A., J.D. (magna cum laude), Esq., attorney and counselor at law, proud member of the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association, Winnebago County Bar Association, American Bar Association, Illinois State Bar Association, and the Association of Trial Lawyers of America (and ex-Boy Scout)

 

The president of the Illinois State Medical Society was recently quoted as saying that doctors wanted non-economic damages in malpractice lawsuits capped at $250,000, and that this cap was designed to give recognition that something occurred. He added that $50 million wouldn't bring back a life or a limb.

So now doctors only want to give recognition to their patients who are the victims of medical malpractice? Whatever happened to compensatory damages being just that, compensation? Damages are designed to pay the victim back for what's been done to them by the wrongful conduct of another. Why is it wrong to have a jury, who hears all the evidence, decide the amount of compensation that's fair?

It sure looks like a power play to me. Not a power play by the doctors, but a power play by the insurance companies, using the doctors to cap the amount of money insurance companies have to pay out as damages.

What I don't understand is why the doctors would rather accept as gospel the word of the insurance companies at the expense of their patients, whom they've taken an oath to help?

 

Remember all those doctors who were complaining about large malpractice awards putting them out of business or chasing them from the state? Well, the figures recently released by their own insurance company (ISMIE Mutual) show a 2003 PROFIT of more than $19 million, plus an increase in their reserve of more than $31 million.

What's more, they had such a good year that two senior executives received raises of 12 percent to 18 percent, resulting in yearly salaries of more than $600,000.

 

Do you still want to give up your right to have a jury decide the question of fair damages if you have to sue a doctor for negligence, just to help them out of this crisis?