Law, Medicine and Forensic Science, Third Edition (By William J. Curran and E. Donald Shapiro)

Mention the term "health law" to the average person, including most attorneys and health professionals, and one will immediately conjure up visions of medical malpractice litigation. Private lawsuits brought by individual patients seeking monetary damages from their health care providers based on alleged breach of professional duty have been a part of this nation's legal and social landscape for a considerable time. The prosecution and defense of such claims has kept a substantial number of attorneys quite gainfully occupied. Medical malpractice continues today to be an increasingly prolific area of legal activity, owing to factors like the ever-growing organizational and technological complexity and impersonality of health care delivery, the escalating costs of obtaining health care, and generally more demanding public attitudes fostered by the civil rights and consumer movements-and their triumphs--of the past quarter century.

New legal theories, unthought of just a few years ago, such as "wrongful life" and "corporate liability," are now routinely argued, and in many cases accepted, bases for imposing financial liability upon individual and institutional health care providers. Malpractice litigation continues to be a major and expanding source of legal employment.