Doctors and would-be doctors in the law reports

Abstract

Doctors (and, following the order in the title of this lecture, I shall come to. would-be doctors later) figure in our law reports in several guises - as plaintiffs or defendants in civil actions, as persons charged in criminal actions, as witnesses and, lastly and more commonly, as experts. For the purposes of this lecture, I am confining my interest to doctors qua doctors as otherwise there are, of course, numerous instances of doctors figuring in the law reports as ordinary litigants. Obviously there is nothing to preclude doctors from joining in this national pastime which is court litigation and, as I said, there are several reported cases of doctors, even some of the most reputable ones, suing or being sued for damages in connection with traffic accidents, whereas in relation to traffic accidents I am obviously more concerned with doctors as experts assessing, for instance, (and this is by no means easy) the percentage of an injured person's permanent incapacity for the purposes of an action for damages.