A newly launched website, LitiPages.com, attempts to intimidate patients who are considering malpractice law suits, encourage doctors not to treat patients in need of care, and punish lawyers who represent victims of medical negligence.

This, my friends, is a truly unethical website.

The site collects and lists the names of patients who have filed medical malpractice cases in Florida, and suggests that doctors avoid treating them in the future. Litipages doesn't distinguish between the lawsuits; a patient suing because the doctor left a scalpel in his gut is regarded exactly the same as the patient who sues for harm only discernible to him and his lawyer. What matters on the site is the result: it will list only plaintiffs who filed cases that ended in a defense verdict, a settlement, or a plaintiff verdict on only one count while other counts were dismissed.

Fair enough, you say? Not at all. A lawsuit that results in a defense verdict is not necessarily a spurious or unjustified claim. And most medical malpractice lawsuits end in settlements, particularly when the malpractice was egregious and virtually indefensible. That scalpel left in the gut, for example, will probably result in a settlement, not a jury verdict.

The sentiment behind the site is that patients who have the audacity to sue doctors don't deserve treatment at all. The objective behind the site is more sinister: instill fear in every potential med-mal plaintiff that a lawsuit today, however justified, may mean vastly reduced options for medical care later.

As a special bonus, the site also attempts to punish lawyers who bring malpractice suits, urging plaintiffs who have lost their cases at trial to turn around and sue their plaintiff's attorney. "If your attorney proceeded with a lawsuit without warning you of the risks involved, you may be the victim of Legal Malpractice and may be entitled to compensation," the site states. One of the risks not mentioned, presumably, is the risk that an unethical website will set out to get you blacklisted.

The registered operator of the Web site is Medico-Judicial Online Media. The company is gathering data on Florida medical malpractice cases filed after July 4 2006 and plans to make the database available free online starting next July. According to a story in the Daily Business Review, it eventually hopes to publish a database covering medical malpractice cases across the United States. Interestingly, LitiPages.com is based on the Caribbean island of Nevis, apparently to protect it against lawsuits.

The story in the Daily Business Review also reports that, in an especially cynical touch, the anti-medical malpractice site intends to accept advertising from plaintiff's attorneys as well as malpractice defense attorneys. While the site's operators claim in interviews that the site is neutral and is merely reporting facts, the language on the site contradicts them:

"A physician may feel that a patient who has filed a medical malpractice suit and lost a trial before a jury of their peers harbors unrealistic expectations of their physician and probably of the health care system at large. Accordingly, a responsible physician who feels that a patient's behavior demonstrates unrealistic medical expectations has both a right (and arguably a responsibility) to refuse elective care to that patient." 

Ethics alert! Like all professionals, doctors have a general obligation not to withhold their services. While a physician may refuse care to any patient, refusing it because a U.S. citizen has exercised his or her rights to seek redress in court against a doctor is an effort to use healing skills as an instrument of coercion. Imagine police declaring that they will allow thieves to rob at will any citizen who filed a civil lawsuit for wrongful arrest. Litipages.com's supposedly fair distinction that only litigants who do not prevail in court warrant shunning is a false one. No litigant can ever be sure whether or not a lawsuit will be successful. The site's true intent is to discourage all medical malpractice litigation, although every authority, including the American Medical Association (which, shamefully, has declared its support for Litipages), agrees that medical malpractice is real, common, and devastating. Moreover, as a study released in May by researchers at the Harvard University School of Public Health concluded, claims that frivolous lawsuits dominate the U.S. medical malpractice system are fanciful.

Litipages.com intimidates legitimate victims of malpractice, facilitates the practices of inept doctors, advocates withholding medical care from patients in need of it, discourages the exercise of Constitutionally guaranteed legal rights, recommends the filing of spurious lawsuits against attorneys, and, to top it all off, is dishonest about its motives. There may be more outrageously unethical websites online, but there can't be many with the potential to do more harm.

See unethical sites from other months