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I think you should mention in the post that the patient then decided to pull the plug on the potential suit, out of loyalty to the doctor who saved his life. So this story ended justly.

But many such stories don’t. My old law firm defended suits for an internationally regarded children’s hospital that would routinely save the lives of premature and other endangered infants. As a result, many newborns who would have died shortly after birth in less sophisticated hospitals were saved. But these babies had high mortality rates later, because they were on the margin of survival. So of course the parents routinely sued the doctors who had heroically save their newborns earlier.

While you had to sympathasize with the parents’ grief, I often wondered how they could live with themselves. I wonder if, years later after the emotions ebb, they ever think back on the wrong that they’ve done to their doctors.

I don’t know who could communicate this, but no one in the system really explains to clients that their lawyers cannot make their moral choices for them. Indeed, the duty of zealous representation may sometimes require lawyers to do things that, while compliant with the rules of ethics, are immoral. I guess it’s easy to rationalize advice of counsel as a reason for doing something that, deep down, you know is wrong.

I don’t know who could communicate this, but no one in the system really explains to clients that their lawyers cannot make their moral choices for them.

Not a lawyer, so I have to ask… can’t the lawyer?
For example, say something like, “well, I can’t tell you if suing this doctor is the right thing to do, you’ll have to make that decision… and if you do decide to sue, I’ll carry out my responsibilities with all the zeal the law allows,” followed by “but you should know that the possible consequences for the doctor are X Y and Z?”

Is it possible (serious question) that attorneys sometimes turn down these cases on the basis of morality, but that we don’t hear about them for that very reason?

Or is it perhaps that once a potential client is sitting in the chair and telling the attorney why he’s there, the attorney says “screw it, he wouldn’t be here if he didn’t want that doctor’s mercedes?

Again, not pretending to know, but interested.

I agree clients bear the main responsibility.

BUT (and that’s a huge but). I strongly believe that lawyer’s ethics rules are actively encouraging (or at least enabling) bad clients/lawsuits.

Essentially, I think that “duty of zealous representation” is not a good idea and instead main lawyer’s duty should be to have justice served (yes, he may take a somewhat one-sided point of view, but not a totally one-sided view as is the case now).

One solution to the medical malpractice crisis – and I’m only 1/2 kidding here – is off-shore doctoring. Where the law is ambiguous as to whether a doctor & patient can contract out of negligence suits (particularly when the patient always has the alternative of pleading gross negligence to get around such a restriction), doctors can avoid the malpractice crisis by just going 120 miles out (or whatever the distance is to international waters.) Cheaper insurance for the doctors, meaning cheaper care for the patients, a less threatening doctor-patient relationship, and liberty for all.

It’s a fantasy, given the countless practical difficulties, and given that plaintiff lawyers & judges will find some jurisdictional basis to allow the suits anyway. Worked for boxing in the movie Gangs of New York, however.

I guess there’s always Mexico.

Maybe Plato could amend The Republic to include some kind of allegory about intersection of legal ethics and medical procedures, and the agents involved in dispensing justice. As Brian noted, off-shoring (such as Bumrungrad) is quite attractive. According to 60 Mins, some of the Ivy League’s best physicians are now quite content practicing in India, Sri Lanka, and the Far East. Five grand will get you a triple bypass, air fare, and luxury accommodations (ocean front) for two, at the hands of the planet’s most skilled medical professionals; five grand and a fifty page release.

Is it possible (serious question) that attorneys sometimes turn down these cases on the basis of morality, but that we don’t hear about them for that very reason?

This happens all the time! It may shock some people here, but I actually do believe there are at least a few ethical attorneys out there who do this.

The problem is that you can then walk next door and see if THAT attorney will turn you down. Etc.

ALL attorneys have to turn it down, not just some, and the only way that will happen is if ethical violations actually result in real and effective disciplinary action. Since the odds of that happening are vanishingly small (to put it mildly), well…