In my previous two blogs, I described the circumstances leading to mass tort litigation involving 10,000 claims of silicosis, diagnosed by a handful of doctors who examined prospective patients in X-ray machine trailers parked near K-Marts. Each of the diagnosing doctors backed down and withdrew their diagnoses after being grilled during depositions.
U.S. District Judge Janis G. Jack, after hearing the diagnosing doctors' testimonies, disqualified them from participating in the litigation, essentially quashing the lawsuits. Her In re: Silica Products Liability Litigation, Order No. 29 is so full of insights about the dangers of medical-legal corruption of the judicial process, that I've simply quoted her opinion at length below.
Judge Jack wrote: "...In the majority of cases, these diagnoses are more the creation of lawyers than of doctors. Conversely, virtually all of the challenged diagnosing doctors seemed to be under the impression they were practicing law rather than medicine. They referred to the Plaintiffs as "clients" rather than "patients", and they utilized shockingly relaxed standards of diagnosing that they would never have employed on themselves, their families or their patients in their clinical practices....
"And, finally, despite diagnosing a serious and completely preventable disease at unprecedented rates, not a single doctor even bothered to lift a telephone and notify any governmental agency, union, employer, hospital or even media outlet, all of whom conceivably could have taken steps to ensure recognition of currently-undiagnosed silicosis cases and to prevent future cases from developing.
"One can imagine the outcry that would have resulted had these doctors kept silent after diagnosing thousands of new cases of avian flu or mad-cow disease. Had these doctors been acting as doctors--and had they genuinely believed their diagnoses were legitimate - they would have taken this simple and humane step. Instead, these diagnoses were about litigation rather than health care. And yet this statement, while true, overestimates the motives of the people who engineered them. The word "litigation" implies (or should imply) the search for truth and the quest for justice. But it is apparent that truth and justice had very little to do with these diagnoses - otherwise more effort would have been devoted to ensuring they were accurate. Instead, these diagnoses were driven by neither health nor justice: they were manufactured for money. [Emphasis added]
"The record does not reveal who originally devised this scheme, but it is clear that the lawyers, doctors and screening companies were all willing participants....
"This explosion in the number of silicosis claims...suggest perhaps the worst industrial disaster in recorded world history. ...Moreover, given the sheer volume of claims - each supported by a silicosis diagnosis from a physician - one would expect the CDC or NIOSH to be involved, examining and responding to this enormous epidemic. One would expect local health departments and physician groups to be mobilized. ...But none of these things have happened. There has been no response from OSHA, the CDC, NIOSH or the American Medical Association to this sudden, unprecedented onslaught of silicosis cases....
"In short, this appears to be a phantom epidemic, unnoticed by everyone other than those enmeshed in the legal system: the defendants, who have already spent millions of dollars defending these suits; the plaintiffs, who have been told that they are suffering from an incurable, irreversible and potentially fatal disease; and the courts, who must determine whether they are being faced with the effects of an industrial disaster of unprecedented proportion - or something else entirely....
"Limited judicial resources are consumed weeding out meritless claims, costing the judiciary, costing other litigants whose suits are delayed, and ultimately costing the public, who pays for a judicial system that is supposed to move with some degree of speed and efficiency. Defendant companies pay significant costs litigating meritless claims. And what harms these companies also harms the companies' shareholders, current employees, and ability to create jobs in the future. And, potentially, every meritless claim that is settled takes money away from Plaintiffs whose claims have merit."
