Since medical malpractice litigation is a pervasive phenomenon, it is likely surgeons will encounter it at some point in their career. One survey of specialty arthroplasty surgeons reported that more than 70% of respondents had been sued at least once for medical malpractice during their career. Since the 1960s the frequency of medical malpractice claims has increased and today, lawsuits filed by aggrieved patients alleging malpractice by a physician are relatively common in the United States. However, before the 1960s, legal claims for medical malpractice were rare, and had little impact on the practice of medicine. In the United States, medical malpractice suits first appeared with regularity beginning in the 1800s. ” In 1532, during the reign of Charles V, a law was passed that required the opinion of medical men to be taken formally in every case of violent death this was the precursor to requiring expert testimony from a member of the profession in medical negligence claims, to establish the standard of care. ![]() One early medical malpractice case from England, for example, held that both a servant and his master could sue for damages against a doctor who had treated the servant and made him more ill by employing “unwholesome medicine. These records provide an unbroken line of medical malpractice decisions, all the way to modern times. ![]() After the Norman conquest of 1066, English common law was developed, and during the reign of Richard Coeur de Lion at the close of the 12th century, records were kept in the Court of Common Law and the Plea Rolls. Around 1200 AD, Roman law was expanded and introduced to continental Europe. Under Roman law, medical malpractice was a recognized wrong. Writings on medical responsibility can be traced back to 2030 BC when the Code of Hammurabi provided that “If the doctor has treated a gentlemen with a lancet of bronze and has caused the gentleman to die, or has opened an abscess of the eye for a gentleman with a bronze lancet, and has caused the loss of the gentleman’s eye, one shall cut off his hands. The concept that every person who enters into a learned profession undertakes to bring to the exercise of a reasonable degree of care and skill dates back to the laws of ancient Rome and England.
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