[HSF] Standard of care for lawyers

[Edward Bender]

This is disturbing but not that surprising.  Perhaps if lawyers were
required to carry malpractice insurance that paid as well as medical
malpractice insurance, there would be an incentive for one attorney to go
after another.  As it stands, what's in it for a prospective plaintiff?
Ethics are obviously not involved.

I related your story to one of my cardiologists with whom I regularly trade
legal nightmare stories.  He tells me of a surgeon who was in the middle of
an aortic aneurysm repair who was mistakenly paged by an outside ER for a
trauma case.  He wasn't on call and obviously could not deal with the acute
trauma during his AAA repair in any case.  The correct surgeon was called,
the patient was transferred but died in the ER of severe multiple trauma.
The mistakenly called surgeon was named in the subsequent law suit, and the
plaintiff's attorney refused to drop him from the case unless he was paid
some money.  This went on for years, and he was eventually dropped.  The
surgeon wanted to sue the attorney but could find no attorney that was
willing to take the case.  The surgeon was so angered by this that he spent
the next year learning how to file and pursue this himself, and he
eventually won a huge settlement from the litigator's law firm.  The moral
of the story is that litigators are scum sucking, bottom dwelling, garbage
eating pig-f**kers, who have crawled out of the a**hole of hell - and I mean
that with all due respect.

Ed Bender, MD


On 4/9/08 1:28 PM, "dukeb60 at aol.com" <dukeb60 at aol.com> wrote:

> ?? It has been fairly quiet on the forum so I'll post this recent response
> from our State Supreme Court to induce some reaction.? As you know, I am a
> lawyer although I have never practiced law but do have a little more
> background than the average person and did pass the bar.? I recently had a
> lawyer handle a case for me in which he performed very poorly and what I
> considered to be in a frankly negligent manner by not representing my
> interests and failing to even read some rather pertinent legal materials.? As
> a result, I filed a complaint with the Counsel for Discipline of our State
> Supreme court to review his handling of the case.? The response startled even
> me not so much in the conclusion but the rational for the same, which I will
> share.? The respondent wrote,
> 
> "Isolated instances of ordinary negligence or errors of judgement do not rise
> to the level of a disciplinary violation and are not sufficient to warrant
> disciplinary action.?
> ?
> ??As stated in Modern?Legal Ethics (1986):
> ??? 
> ????????? To date, the enforcement of competence standards has been generally
> limited to relatively exotic, blatant, or repeated cases of lawyer bungling.?
> Lawyers who make some showing of effort, and who do nothing other than perform
> badly, rarely appear in the appellate reports in discipline cases.? The
> lawyers who are disciplined for? incompetence have usually aggravated their
> situation.? For example, several cases involve lawyers who, after their
> incompetent work, concocted elaborate schemes or lies to decieve a client
> whose case was mishandled.
> 
> ?? ... For the above reasons I have concluded, pursuant to Rule of Discipline
> 9(C), that your allegations against Attorney "X" do not warrant further
> inquiry by this office."?
> 
> ???? So, this is the standard to which our legal professionals are held in
> their handling of cases.? I am quite certain it is not the same standard to
> which we, as medical professionals, are held in the handling of our cases.? It
> is okay to bungle as long as you don't concoct a scheme to conceal the
> bungling.
> ? 
> As much as it is hard to believe that is actually what a representative of the
> Supreme Court wrote it is true.? Caveat emptor, clearly, is the rule in law.?
> While I appreciate the education of a law degree, it is indeed embarrassing
> sometimes to be one.
> 
> 
> ??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
> ????????????????????????????????????????? Ed
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