Recent Changes in Medical—Legal Statutory and Case Law and Their Application to Cosmetic Surgery

Abstract

In the mid 1970s medical malpractice insurance carriers, faced with huge increases in both the number of claims and the size of awards, elected either to discontinue writing medical malpractice insurance policies or to raise premiums for this type of insurance by a factor of two or three. Faced with the prospect of unavailability of affordable medical malpractice insurance many physicians elected to go without any malpractice coverage, went into early retirement terminating their practices altogether, or narrowed the scope of their practices to eliminate those procedures which carried an inordinately high risk of medical malpractice litigation. In response to the potential unavailability of adequate health care because of the impending medical malpractice insurance crisis many states enacted remedial emergency legislation in an attempt to deal with the crisis by providing an incentive for insurance carriers to either reenter the medical malpractice field or for those remaining to limit their proposed premium increases substantially. California was one of those states which enacted broad remedial legislation. In addition other states enacted legislation quite similar to California's. An attempt will be made to review those statutes passed by California in specific response to the medical malpractice crisis and their history as they underwent constitutional attack in the California appellate court system. The legislation reviewed here is of course applicable only in California. However, many other states have enacted comparable legislation and many jurisdictions currently are considering statutory changes which would parallel California's laws. California's current statutes dealing with medical malpractice litigation could be considered a model for those jurisdictions currently facing a crisis in affordability or availability of malpractice insurance coverage.