Malpractice refers to misconduct or negligence by a professional person, such as a physician, lawyer, or accountant. Such misconduct includes fail-ure to exercise the level of skill and learning expected of a licensed profes-sional. The result of malpractice to the client or patient is injury, damage, or some loss owing to professional incompetence.
The official criteria for a valid medical malpractice claim are duty, breach, damages, and causation. The practitioner must have had a relation-ship to the patient, which indicates that he or she had a duty to exercise or-dinary care; must have breached that duty, according to the applicable stan-dard of care; and because of that breach must have caused the patient physical and monetary damages.
If there is evidence of malpractice, a client may sue in a civil action, seek-ing damages in the form of money. Those most likely to be sued are surgeons, since malpractice is much easier to prove when a surgical operation has been done. If, for example, a surgeon leaves a foreign object inside a closed wound, the surgeon is clearly liable for the carelessness. Plastic surgeons are most at risk, since their operations are done to improve the patients appearance. Dissatisfied patients may sue.
Medical malpractice actions do three things: provide quality control for the medical profession; provide some measure of compensation for the harm done; and give emotional vindication to the plaintiff, which is a measure of his or her ability to make a complaint and receive a satisfactory response. Of these, quality control is probably best achieved.
Since the 1970s there has been a virtual epidemic of malpractice suits in American courts. The bringing of abortion malpractice suits has even been employed by both prochoice and antiabortion plaintiffs. Wrongful birth ac-tion is a medical malpractice claim by parents for the birth of a severely disabled child. Some antiabortion groups encourage abortion malpractice claims, one type of which is for emotional harm they term post-abortion trauma. Other professionals, including clergy, teachers, stockbrokers, ar-chitects, and dentists, have been sued for malpractice.
Because judgments against a professional may result in very high dam-ages, often of more than 1 million dollars, individuals in the professions carry liability insurance.
Premiums for malpractice insurance have risen dramatically, costing thousands of dollars a year. Some state legislatures have taken action to limit the number of suits and the amount of the damages.
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1) active negligence
2) crime of negligence
3) criminal negligence
4) gross negligence
5) imputed negligence
6) infliction by negligence
7) killer by negligence
8) passive negligence
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1. What does malpractice refer to?
2. What is usually the result of malpractice?
3. What does each of the official criteria for a medical malpractice claim (duty, breach, damages, and causation) mean?
4. Why are surgeons most likely to be sued for malpractice?
5. Why do doctors, dentists, stockbrokers, and architects usually carry liability insurance?
Malpractice .
UNIT 5. REMEDIES IN THE CIVIL COURT OF LAW
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What types of damages are enforced under the Civil Code in the Russian Federation and in the Common Law countries?
TEXT 1
Types of Damages
