Offshore company touts plans for Web site listing med-mal plaintiffs.It's been called the "unethical Web site of the month" by the online Ethics Scoreboard. It's been labeled a "disturbing development" by the tort law A body of rights, obligations, and remedies that is applied by courts in civil proceedings to provide relief for persons who have suffered harm from the wrongful acts of others. blog Concurring Opinions. And it's raised the hackles hackles the hairs over the neck and back that are elevated by arrector pili muscles in response to fright or anger. A mechanism to threaten opponents, perhaps by appearing larger. of plaintiff lawyers and the interest of doctors. The subject of all this buzz doesn't even exist yet. Or, at least, it lives only in the fast-moving ether of the Internet. In July, a company called Medico-Judicial Online Media issued a press release announcing that it was establishing a Web site called LitiPages.com, whose purpose would be to gather and list the names of patients who had sued their doctors for malpractice. Billing itself as "an information/news service written by journalists, not attorneys," the site would list only cases that ended in a settlement or partial jury verdict for the plaintiff; it would exempt cases in which the plaintiff won on all counts. The release said the site would be up and running, and its information available to the public, by July 2007. The company, based in the Caribbean Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis Noun 1. St. Kitts and Nevis - a country on several of the Leeward Islands; located to the east southeast of Puerto Rico; achieved independence from the United Kingdom in 1983 Federation of Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Christopher-Nevis, Saint Kitts and Nevis, St. , claims it is an impartial information source and takes no side in the debate over tort "reform." But it also plans to encourage plaintiffs who lost their medical malpractice Improper, unskilled, or negligent treatment of a patient by a physician, dentist, nurse, pharmacist, or other health care professional. cases to sue their lawyers for legal malpractice A lawyer is obligated to comply with a code of ethics that is adopted by the state in which the lawyer practices. These rules, typically known as the Model Rules of Ethics, or Ethical Rules, address a lawyer's conduct in various situations. . According to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. an article on Law.com, the announcement said, "If your attorney proceeded with a lawsuit without warning you of the risks involved, you may be the victim of legal malpractice and may be entitled to compensation." Oddly, the press release said the operators planned to fund the site by selling advertising to trial lawyers. News of the potential Web site was met with mostly negative reaction, including from Alexandria, Virginia, attorney Jack Marshall, president of ProEthics, a professional ethics professional ethics, n the rules governing the conduct, transactions, and relationships within a profession and among its publics. professional ethics liability, n 1. consulting firm. "The sentiment behind the site is that patients who have the audacity to sue doctors don't deserve treatment at all," Marshall wrote on his web site. "The objective behind the site is more sinister: instill in·still v. To pour in drop by drop. in  stil·la tion n. fear in every potential med-mal plaintiff that a
lawsuit today, however justified, may mean vastly reduced options for
medical care later."
But Julie Hilden, a former First Amendment lawyer, wrote in her Findlaw.com column that people using the site would benefit from more information, not less, and that calls to ban the site were misplaced mis·place tr.v. mis·placed, mis·plac·ing, mis·plac·es 1. a. To put into a wrong place: misplace punctuation in a sentence. b. . "Information about doctors and lawyers is in too short supply," she wrote. "We should be able to access full (and, ideally, free) dossiers of information about all the professionals in whose hands we put our lives and affairs--including information about others' prior experience with them." Two years ago, a group of doctors set up the Web site DoctorsKnowUs.com, which listed the names of plaintiffs, lawyers, and experts in medical malpractice cases. The site shut down operations a few days after it was featured in a New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of Times article. At press time, it was back up but listing only malpractice-related news items, and no information about specific lawsuits, plaintiffs, lawyers, or experts. Whether LitiPages will meet a similar fate is unclear. Right now, its existence appears to be little more than rumor. At press time, the LitiPages site was inaccessible, and research turned up no information about Medico-Judicial Online Media. |
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