farmdoc's blog post number 426

Today I write of doctors and lawyers. In my work I have contact with many lawyers here in Tasmania. One stands out from the rest. He’s bright, he thinks clearly and so he seemingly effortlessly separates the essence from the dross, he writes logically and succinctly, and he’s professionally sensible and wise. And he’s my friend. Over the years we’ve developed a nice arrangement: I send him medical articles I think will interest him; and he reciprocates with legal items he thinks will interest me. Generally they do. But most are verdicts of significant legal cases, and I find some of the nuances of the legal argument difficult to follow. This week I received from him an 85-page judgement on a medical negligence case decided earlier this year in the NSW Supreme Court’s Court of Appeal. Even to me as a medical specialist, the medical matters at issue were complex. So I wondered how judges without medical training – however intellectually gifted they may be – could grasp them, analyse them, and reach a fair and reasonable decision. At one point in their judgement, the three learned appeal court judges wrote ‘Resolution of these conflicts required an assessment to be made of the persuasiveness of the various medical opinions’. To me assessing the opinions’ persuasiveness is different from assessing their scientific merit – which is what ‘s necessary if justice is to be done. I’ll ask my friend the lawyer about it. The dialogue continues. Ho hum.