MDs call it a 'rally,' lawyers a 'strike'

Physicians plan Statehouse demonstration to press calls for malpractice insurance reform

Wednesday, May 14, 2003

BY ROBERT SCHWANEBERG
Star-Ledger Staff

As physicians prepare to rally by the thousands tomorrow in support of limits on medical malpractice verdicts, trial lawyers and consumer activists yesterday urged them not to participate in an unethical and misguided "strike."

The Medical Society of New Jersey maintains that tomorrow's rally at the Statehouse in Trenton -- the third in the last year -- is not a strike.

"It's doctors exercising their constitutional right to petition the government," said Medical Society spokesman John Shaffer.

But at a news conference yesterday in Trenton, the state chapter of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America displayed a blow-up of a notice from a plastic surgery group in Hamilton declaring: "Strike on May 15, 2003."

"The doctors are going on strike in violation of the AMA ethical guidelines that forbid strikes," said Bruce Stern, president of ATLA-NJ.

At a separate news conference, Peter Guzzo, executive director of Consumers for Civil Justice, said physicians who join the rally will regret it when they realize they are "doing the bidding of the Medical Society." Guzzo charged, and Shaffer denied, that bad business decisions by MIIX, the insurance company created by the Medical Society, precipitated a phony malpractice insurance crisis.

Whether it be a rally or a strike, doctors and lawyers agree that tomorrow's demonstration is an effort to influence the Legislature as it considers competing versions of bills intended to alleviate spiraling malpractice premiums that physicians say are driving them out of business.

A week-long walkout by physicians in February ended when the Medical Society endorsed a Senate version that puts a $300,000 limit on how much medical malpractice victims can recover for their pain and suffering from negligent physicians or their insurers.

The victims could recover an additional $700,000 for pain and suffering from a state fund, providing it has the cash on hand. They also could collect their full "economic damages," such as lost wages and medical bills.

That bill passed the Senate 32-5 in March, but faces opposition from both trial lawyers and Assembly leaders opposed to limiting a victim's right to recover.

ATLA-NJ endorses an alternative plan by Assembly Majority Leader Joseph Roberts (D-Camden) to pay subsidies to physicians in high-risk specialties facing steep increases in malpractice rates. It sets no limit on what victims can recover.

To counter the physicians' argument that unlimited pain-and-suffering awards lead to "jackpot" jury verdicts, Stern and other trial lawyers introduced malpractice victims -- several in wheelchairs -- and their families.

Mount Laurel lawyer Tommie Ann Gibney said Bill Kirksey went into the hospital for "a minor accident" -- a fall from a ladder -- and wound up a quadriplegic because a diagnostic test, an MRI, "was not ordered until it was too late" despite his repeated complaints of neck pain.

Kirksey said the confidential settlement he received "seemed like an enormous amount of money" at first, but his motorized wheelchair, specially equipped van, ramps for his home and medical supplies "cost a fortune."

"It made me able to survive, that's all," Kirksey said.

Robert Schwaneberg covers legal issues.
He can be reached at rschwaneberg@starledger.com or (609) 989-0324.