... or, to borrow a phrase from those doing the limbo, "how low can you go?" Kim Strassel has a long but eye-opening article in the Wall Street Journal today looking at the legal shenanigans surrounding a single patient whose exposure to asbestos produced mesothelioma, a malignant cancer.
I can't do justice to it with a brief summary, so you'll need to read it in its entirety. The highlights are that
- Two different law firms sued multiple asbestos trust funds, obtaining compensation from five of them for the same patient. That's right, five.
- One of the firms tried to turn the trick a sixth time, believe it or not, but unfortunately for them this defendant managed to get the history of multiple awards exposed.
- This second firm then went back and "modified" previous filings - for which they'd already received awards - which if originally presented in their modified form would likely not have resulted in awards.
- Left an incriminating email trail of their maneuverings and subsequent cover-up.
Suffice it to say that it might make a great TV movie.
As a doctor and surgeon I'm left with two thoughts. First, it seems to me that trying to obtain payoffs from multiple sources is the legal equivalent of doing unnecessary surgery, or at least billing two insurers for the same procedure.
Second, how lax are the standards regarding legal documents that they can be changed in ways that completely alter their meaning after a settlement or award is received based on those documents? The firm in question seemed to believe that their slight of hand involved not the alterations but the fact that they were trying to hide the changes.
Having been on the receiving end of patient and attorney requests to "modify" my records it would seem to be the legal standard that all records are malleable. I can assure you they are not, unless there is a proven error, and not just a "preferred" version of events.
