Re: Legal impact on Medicine - was VBAC
From: art fougner, md (evsono@pipeline.com)
Sun Aug 13 14:39:55 2000
The Verdict, starring Paul Newman as a drunk lawyer, involves the
malpractice case of a maternal death from aspiration during a delivery
in a Boston Catholic Hospital and the subsequent cover-up. James Mason
was superb as the defense attorney representing the archdiocese. One
reviewer felt that this was one of Newman's finest performances. The
film was based on The Verdict by Barry Reed and directed by Sidney
Lumet. defnitiely worth a Blockbuster Night.
art
At Sun, 13 Aug 2000, Dean Huffman wrote:
>
>I will try to find out about when "The Verdict" came out. All I know
>was that it was a Paul Newman movie. Now that I think about it, it was
>the lawyer (Paul Newman) who was the drunk.
>
>Deamn
>
>At Sat, 12 Aug 2000, Gerald P. Rodriguez wrote:
>>
>>Dean,
>>I honestly don't know. What year did the "The Verdict" come out? I heard
>>Melvin Belli tell his tales about 1963. Incidentally, I also remember that
>>one of his major points he hammered on was that a lot of malpractice
>>law-suits back then were being brought (and won) on the "breach of implied
>>verbal contract." When a bad result happened, the patient sued and won
>>because the surgeon had in essence guaranteed a good or perfect result. It
>>may be hard to believe, but as late as the '60s, gynecologists (and other
>>surgeons) would simply tell patients stuff such as: "Don't worry about it,
>>Honey, everything is going to 100% perfect after your surgery." When the
>>result wasn't "perfect" the patient would sue for breach-of-contract.
>>
>>Gerald P. Rodríguez, M.D., FACOG
>>
>>From: "Dean Huffman" <jth@springnet1.com>
>>To: "Multiple recipients of list OB-GYN-L" <ob-gyn-l@forum.obgyn.net>
>>
>>> Was that the case that the Paul Newman movie, "The Verdict" was based
>>> on?
>>>
>>> At Fri, 11 Aug 2000, Gerald P. Rodriguez wrote:
>>> >
>>> >Nah,
>>> >As a medical student in the mid '60s at the University of California, San
>>> >Francisco, I heard a talk at UCSF given by one Melvin Belli, who was
>>early
>>> >on called the "King of Torts" (at least as applied to medical
>>malpractice)
>>> >who was then cutting his teeth on malpractice, real or contrived. I
>>recall
>>> >vividly his tale of how he managed to qualify as an "expert witness" a
>>> >down-and-out alcoholic M.D. in San Francisco to win his first case. Back
>>> >then there was "the conspiracy of silence" that tort lawyers had to deal
>>> >with.
>>> >
>>> >--
>>> >Gerald P. Rodriguez, M.D., FACOG
--
art fougner, md
A series of 1000 cases begins with but a single anecdote.
