A couple of other kinds of liability (as in other than the medmal that this blog is usually about) were mentioned in the blogosphere recently. First of all, Kevin MD writes in California: Home of the Nanny State, “Don’t worry parents, you don’t need to be personally responsible for your children, Uncle Sam will do it for you.” I usually am completely on board with Kevin’s perspective, and I certainly understand his reaction, but after reading the story, I wonder if he isn’t overreacting in this case. After all, with truancy laws and all, parents are pretty much pressured to put their kids in the care of other people and not be available to deal personally with emergencies.

I’d be interested in anyone’s opinion. Please leave a comment.

The other case is from the medical quack, which linked the American Medical News site’s story, “Judge rules criminal fraud case against Idaho is frivolous.” The judge awarded the doctor $300,000, though the government is appealing the decision. It seems that the government’s method for finding fraud, is to simply find those doctor’s whose numbers are not average and assume it is because of wrongdoing. In bringing the case to trial the Judge found that the government both ignored expert testimony that went against their desire to prosecute and also neglected to inform the defense attorney of this expert testimony.

If the ruling sticks, it could offer some hope for physicians who are caught in similar circumstances and shine the light on the government’s often aggressive tactics in health care fraud cases, some experts said.

Doctors often are forced to settle such cases, even when they did nothing wrong, because the financial stakes are so high, said Robert S. Salcido, a Washington, D.C.-based attorney for Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP and a former Justice Dept. civil fraud lawyer. Sometimes doctors also face significant jail time.

The only reason we have hope in this case is because one doctor refused to be intimidated and fought for his vindication from false accusations. According to the story, he has spent over a million dollars, far more than he was granted in response to the government’s frivolous prosecution.

Now that I think of it, this story comes pretty close to a conventional medical malpractice tort issue.  What it indicates is that the government itself might be another patient-attorney team who are driving up the cost of practicing medicine by unwarranted litigation–a cost that gets shared by all patients.