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To the Editor: Lawyers and physicians will undoubtedly agree that cooperation broadens the skill set available to solve difficult problems. Groups that are at loggerheads in some spheres can work together to achieve shared goals.¹ Unfortunately, when Drs Jacobson and Bloche² move from praising cooperation to providing evidence that cooperation between lawyers and physicians could lead to meaningful tort reform, they grasp at straws.

While physicians and lawyers commonly and productively cooperate outside the domain of malpractice litigation, this is irrelevant to reforming malpractice litigation, where trial lawyers and physicians have fundamentally incompatible views. One group sees "tort reform" where the other sees a threat to "civil rights" and to "your very livelihood."^3-4

In 1959, C.P. Snow noted that despite numerous similarities, physical scientists and "literary intellectuals" at Cambridge University functioned as members of different cultures with different world views.⁵ The barriers that separate trial lawyers and physicians are much . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Elliott Foucar, MD
foucell@aol.com
Albuquerque, NM