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April 25, 1959, Vol 169, No. 17 >
ARTICLE | April 25, 1959

AVERTING PROFESSIONAL LIABILITY ACTION

Samuel Polsky
JAMA. 1959;169(17):2037-2038. doi:10.1001/jama.1959.73000340004021.
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ABSTRACT

There are three fallacious attitudes common among doctors that lead to professional liability action. First is the belief that diagnostic and surgical skills are the chief safeguard against a malpractice action; second, that being a good Samaritan is good medicine; and third, that a just cause is a good cause. These virtues may win lawsuits, but they seldom prevent them. Being a defendant in a malpractice action is never a happy experience, no matter how sweeping the ultimate victory may be. Before I am branded as a devil's advocate or dismissed as a complete legal cynic, let me still some of the free-floating anxiety that the word "malpractice" seems to arouse in physicians by stating that the bulk of malpractice actions in the United States are readily preventable.

For proof of that statement one need only look at the medical quack. Of the tens of thousands of malpractice actions that

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