Personal Injury Law

Do You Have a Case Against a Doctor When Her Assistant Licks Your Toes?

The New York Personal Injury Lawyer Blog tipped me off to an article in the Chicago Tribune last week about a patient who filed a lawsuit against her eye doctor and his assistant alleging that the patient's toes were licked during her eye exam by the doctor?s assistant in Skokie, Illinois.

Apparently, the Plaintiff went to get an eye exam. The doctor?s assistant entered and dimmed the lights and told the plaintiff he was going to perform a "strip test." He placed a strip over her eyes and told her she would need to keep her eyes closed for 5 to 7 minutes. Feeling something on her feet, she opened her eyes and saw him licking her toes. The assistant reportedly replied, ?"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but I was checking your sugar level."

Many personal injury lawyers are going to disagree with me, but this is my definition of a frivolous medical malpractice action. Her damages were that her toes were licked. Obviously, this is not a good thing, and if it happened to my wife, I might be pretty annoyed and want to do something about it. The Plaintiff did do something about it. She pressed charges and the guy was convicted and sentenced to a year of probation. But now she wants to profit from that moment of having her toes licked and she wants to drag the doctor into it, even though there are no allegations the doctor knew or should have known that this guy was the nutcase that he apparently was. Who knows what a jury will give her but she does not want me on that jury.

I know that the Chicago Tribune sells a lot of papers. You can be sure that someone read this article in the morning on the way to jury duty and then was impaneled for a case where someone was seriously hurt. That deserving injury victim started his or her case behind the eight ball with that juror.

Full post as published by Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog on January 24, 2008 (boomark / email).