Posted On:
May 13, 2009
"Should Courts Force Doctors to Confess Their Own Negligence to Their Patients?"
The Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog has posted an article that discusses if courts should force doctors to admit malpractice to their patients.
University of Baltimore law professor Richard W. Bourne wrote an article published this year in the Arkansas Law Review articulating the theory that there should be an independent tort claim when a doctor destroys evidence or when a doctor fails to disclose to the patient that there has been a breach of the appropriate standard of care that causes injury. Professor Bourne would limit this tort to cases where (1) the wrong is serious, and (2) the failure to reveal is intentional.
Ironically, many times when doctors destroy documents to cover their own tracks, they come across as worse to the jury and therefore are more harshly treated than if they had just been honest in the first place.
...a lot of Maryland doctors who want to rid the medical profession of dishonest doctors would also support a tort to punish doctors who deliberately destroy evidence and/or do not reveal to the patient that serious medical malpractice has been committed.
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