This Has Got To Hurt!

Lawyer (and doctor) Lawrence Dry took on a medical malpractice case. This was a case that he had reviewed and rejected just a month before. Only this time, not recognizing it as that case, he agreed to take it on. Big, big mistake. Here’s where it gets a little crazy. When a lawyer blows a sure winner, he gets sued for malpractice (rare). Or, when a lawyer brings a clearly frivolous case (which is also very rare, despite the propaganda to the contrary), the lawyer has to pay the other side’s costs – if a court so rules.

Now try and imagine a situation where the lawyer gets nailed for losing a clear winner, and for bringing a frivolous case. Yeah, makes your brain hurt, but it happened to Mr. Dry. Seems he filed suit without having an expert to back up his theory (WHICH WAS THE WRONG THEORY, INVOLVING THE WRONG DOCTOR). He later dismissed the case voluntarily. This didn’t sit well with his client. Nor did it sit well with the doctor, who had been defending himself for 2 years. So they both sued Dry and … won! How? Dry apparently had a solid case for the blindness he suffered due to the surgery – but against a different doctor (the anesthesiologist, not the surgeon Dry sued). And the surgeon who was sued had a case against Dry because Dry never produced an expert supporting his theory that the surgeon was responsible for the client’s blindness. The surgeon recovered $80,000 from Dry, while the former client recovered $750,000 from him.