Diagnosing For Dollars
November 11, 2008
If West Virginia’s phantom doctors aren’t bad enough, read this editorial in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal. It seems the real doctor diagnosing many Michigan asbestos claims is even worse. But in this case, it’s not the doctor who has disappeared, it’s the lawsuits.
As the editorial points out, Michigan is still a hot-bed for asbestos claims, accounting for 14% of all asbestos lawsuits and ranked #1 for new filings in 2007. Over the past 15 years, one doctor – a Lansing physician named Michael Kelly – has “reported 7,323 cases of asbestos-related disease” – for which lawyers paid him $500 a pop.
Dr. Kelly is neither a radiologist nor a pulmonologist, the Journal reports, and in 1989 he “failed the federal test that certifies doctors to read X-rays for lung disease.” But apparently, this kind of “expertise” is exactly what personal injury lawyers needed to flood Michigan courts with asbestos claims.
All was running smoothly until Wayne County (MI) Circuit Court Judge Robert Colombo, Jr. began listening to evidence that Dr. Kelly’s dialing for dollar diagnoses were fraudulent. It seems Dr. Kelly made the mistake of sending client/patients to hospitals for their X-rays, apparently forgetting that hospital radiologists would be reading the same X-rays. In nearly 9 out of 10 cases reviewed by Dr. Kelly and hospital radiologists, the hospital doctors found no evidence of disease.
Defense lawyers also provided Judge Colombo with the results of a blind study by independent X-ray readers, which concluded that 88% of Dr. Kelly’s diagnoses were fraudulent. But defense lawyers still may not get the chance to cross examine Dr. Kelly. Within 24 hours of Judge Colombo’s decision to hold a hearing on the doctor, the plaintiffs’ lawyers dropped every lawsuit but one.
The Journal editors argue that Judge Colombo should go ahead with the hearing anyway – and they’re right. It will be interesting to see if judges in other jurisdictions show as much interest in exposing widespread abuses of asbestos litigation like diagnosing for dollars and the case of the phantom doctor.
Posted by Dan Pero in the categories: Medical Liability, Tort Reform, Trial Lawyers
One Response to “Diagnosing For Dollars”
I appreciate your blogging and I encourage you to continue with what you are doing. I wish I could do more to reduce the influence the trial lawyers have on our system and I am deathly afraid that the Obama presidency will empower the lawyers to turn the whole country into their personal ATM.