Plaintiffs underserved by expert medical witnesses

SAN FRANCISCO — Qualified surgeons are not living up to their professional obligation to serve as expert medical witnesses on the plaintiff’s side of medical liability cases.

This was the consensus of a group of surgeons here after listening to a surgeon and a medical defense attorney square off on the matter in a debate at the annual meeting of the American Society for Cataract and Refractive Surgery.

Nearly 70% of the surgeons in the room backed Jack Holladay, MD, who argued vehemently that expert medical witnesses called to support a plaintiff’s case are more often than not “hired guns” who present nothing more than what he called “boilerplate” findings to win the case.

For this reason, plaintiffs are not being adequately served by expert witnesses, Dr. Holladay said.

Dr. Holladay’s opponent, malpractice defense attorney Jeffrey J. Campbell, JD, countered that “plaintiffs are actually overserved – just by underqualified witnesses.”

Dr. Holladay good-naturedly charged Mr. Campbell of playing a game of semantics and said he felt their arguments were essentially the same.

Mr. Campbell insisted that the real question surgeons must ask is why there is a dearth of quality medical testimony for plaintiffs.

“If you believe a colleague has fallen short of the standard of care, you should be willing to say that. The plaintiff’s bar is being underserved by qualified physicians,” Mr. Campbell said.

Respected surgeons owe it to their profession to serve as expert witnesses on both sides of a liability issue to help restore integrity to the tort system, which is in drastic need of repair, Mr. Campbell concluded.

With both debaters essentially arguing the same point by the end, 68% of the audience agreed that plaintiffs are underserved by expert medical witnesses. Dr. Holladay took home the Golden Grizzly Bear Award, given by the ASCRS and the Refractive Clinical Committee, for technically winning the debate.