The Medicine Men

Jewish World Review May 26, 2006 / 28 Iyar, 5766

Junk Science in the Courtroom — ‘Expert Witnesses’ will say anything for money

By Drs. Michael A. Glueck & Robert J. Cihak

The Medicine Men

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | The war rages on daily with staggering losses. That is, the war between good and honest workers and businesses trying to keep their hard earned money — and the trial lawyers who are always looking for new ways to pilfer it. In some cases there is covert collusion between the lawyers, their brethren in the state and national legislatures, and those judges who play catch with these lawyers since they know someday their plundering positions could be reversed.

In their ongoing pursuit of new avenues to attack some trial lawyers have now turned to using junk science in alliance with their ravenous and insatiable appetite for frivolous lawsuits.

The Executive Director of Orange County Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse (OC-CALA), Maryann Maloney, has announced a "Take Out the Trash" campaign encouraging judges, legislators and the public to dump junk science from our courtrooms.

Some "expert witnesses" will say anything for the right price for personal injury lawyers bringing questionable claims, or plaintiffs (recruited by attorneys) filing lawsuits without experiencing any injury. More and more personal injury lawyers are using "expert witness" doctors who have never met the plaintiffs they diagnose. Painful to this writer, some unethical physicians have joined the litigation research, development, manufacturing, marketing and sales squads.

Junk lawsuits based on junk science undermine the integrity of our courts, drive up the price of medicine and doctors' fees for healthcare consumers, and divert funds and attention away from researching and developing medical cures.

Asbestos and silicosis litigation are just the latest examples of how dubious facts are being used to exploit our legal system.

In their first annual Bad Science Investigation ("BSI") Awards the organization "Sick of Lawsuits" (www.sick of lawsuits.org) detected some of the worst uses of bad science in our courts and are disclosing examples of how far some bad actors will go in the interest of trying to profit from lawsuits. Maybe we should call the above organization the BS Investigation team and place them under the sheath of CSI:Las Vegas where they could report to Gil and Kathryn.

Some of the worst:

In California, Dr. Gary Ordog, dubbed "Dr. Mold" by Forbes, has appeared as an expert witness in hundreds of cases claiming that mold can cause a terrifying array of diseases, from lung cancer to cirrhosis of the liver. This is despite the American College of Occupational & Environmental Medicine, the Federal Institute of Medicine and the American College of Medical Toxicology all saying there's no evidence for such claims.

In recent fen-phen litigation, an independent review of 120 echocardiograms diagnosed with heart damage by two cardiologists hired by plaintiffs' attorneys found that only 6% actually showed heart problems. One of the doctors received an extra $1,500 for every positive reading.

A 269-page opinion by Texas federal judge Janis Graham Jack pointed the grand jury toward the corruption involved in almost every one of the 10,000 silicosis claims before her court. "These diagnoses were manufactured for money," she wrote.

Judge Jack, a former nurse, couldn't understand how a disease that caused fewer than 200 deaths annually in the entire United States could have resulted in 20,000 claims in Mississippi and surrounding states.

The diagnosis of silicosis was made in 99% of more than 9,000 plaintiffs by the same nine doctors. One admitted that he didn't even know the criteria for diagnosing the disease, but had simply included a paragraph supplied by the screening company in each of his reports. One doctor had his secretary fill out patient diagnoses on blank forms, while another analyzed 1,239 patients in 72 hours.

The judge also found that more than 65% of the silica plaintiffs had also been plaintiffs in a previous asbestos suit, with the diagnoses made by the same doctors. She stated that statistics alone should have shown the lawyers that their case defied "all medical knowledge and logic," and that by bringing the suit they had shown a "reckless disregard of the duty owed the court."

According to the Wall Street Journal, Judge Jack has "stalled the entire silicosis scam," and also opened the door to probing millions of earlier asbestos suits ("The Silicosis Sheriff," Wall St. J. 7/14/05). Just as judges in Texas and Florida have begun throwing out testimony from questionable "experts," judges everywhere must take an active role in throwing the junk science out of the legal system.

Likewise jurors have an immense responsibility to deny liars for hire. We previously commented on this in JewishWorldReview.com, Jan. 2005, "Jury can fire liars for hire." When you, as a juror, are told to believe lying professionals and distrust honest citizens you not only have a right but an obligation to tell these liars to take a trek. The American jury is our last line of defense against corrupt lawyers, legislators, judges and liars for hire.

We need to put an end to this trumped up sickening litigation epidemic that threatens our healthcare system.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Michael Arnold Glueck, M.D., wrote this week's commentary. He is on the board of Orange County Citizen's Against Law Suit Abuse (OC-CALA)