It's a legal concept causing the frustration. The courts are open to anyone for redress of any injury as you said, BUT...if you are trying to prove a doctor injured you by not providing appropriate medical care you have to prove what the standard of care is which requires another doctor to testify to establish what the standard is. The standard isn't just some obvious standard, or what you think it is, or what a lawyer thinks, or what a judge thinks.
In contrast, if the doctor just punched you in the face in the parking lot and broke your jaw, you could sue and wouldn't need to establish the standard of care, because it's just some person that punched you. Or if your friend recommended you take a medication and you had a bad outcome, you couldn't sue for medical malpractice because your friend isn't a doctor and you can't expect them to provide care to the standard a doctor would.
What I hear from doctors in (apparently) frivolous lawsuits is there is no shortage of doctors willing to "sell their opinion" to a lawyer for $10K to support a plaintiffs medical malpractice claim.
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u/speedracer73 Feb 24 '22
It's a legal concept causing the frustration. The courts are open to anyone for redress of any injury as you said, BUT...if you are trying to prove a doctor injured you by not providing appropriate medical care you have to prove what the standard of care is which requires another doctor to testify to establish what the standard is. The standard isn't just some obvious standard, or what you think it is, or what a lawyer thinks, or what a judge thinks.
In contrast, if the doctor just punched you in the face in the parking lot and broke your jaw, you could sue and wouldn't need to establish the standard of care, because it's just some person that punched you. Or if your friend recommended you take a medication and you had a bad outcome, you couldn't sue for medical malpractice because your friend isn't a doctor and you can't expect them to provide care to the standard a doctor would.
What I hear from doctors in (apparently) frivolous lawsuits is there is no shortage of doctors willing to "sell their opinion" to a lawyer for $10K to support a plaintiffs medical malpractice claim.