<p>I’m very glad. The prosecutor is the personal lawyer of the doctor in question? The sheriff who investigated is a friend and patient of the doctor? Wow.</p>
<p>Yeah, that sounds like something that either is or should be illegal. Conflict of interest, right?</p>
<p>“Torts aren’t much help if the defendant is judgment-proof.”</p>
<p>If the issue is the plaintiff’s ability to recover restitution for lost income or whatever, then putting the defendant in jail doesn’t solve that problem. The plaintiff is still out of luck, financially.</p>
<p>Anyway, these women were educated, employed middle-class people. They probably weren’t judgment-proof – at least not before the hospital fired them. The really interesting case is going to be the nurses’ pending federal suit against the justice system and the hospital. That’s one to watch.</p>
<p>The law suit is interesting reading (well for the first few pages before my eyes glazed over). It says the Sheriff and the doctor were “business associates” in the herbal supplement business. Conflict of interest much??</p>
<p>Only in the Republic of Texas, and shame on the hospital and medical licensing board of Texas for not invoking sanctions against their own. I am a physician and appalled, and I am confident that the nurses will be vindicated, if not on the state then the federal level.</p>
<p>And I hope the nurses’ punitive damages total millions and that their award cannot be overturned.</p>
<p>Shame–hope the girls don’t get the death penalty on top of all of this!</p>
<p>I know some people faulted the NYT original article for not being objective enough, not giving the other side. It looks here, as I suspected, that there isn’t always another side. The sheriff and prosecutor were given a chance to support their position, and it was that the evidence would come out in the trial. Don’t know what else the Times could have done at that point.</p>
<p>And, the evidence that came out was fairly plainly that there *was *no evidence. If anything, the Times could have been stronger about reporting the conflicts of interest, but that would have made the original article even more “one-sided.”</p>
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<p>She was found not guilty. Even in West Texas, you can’t execute someone who was actually acquitted. :)</p>
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<p>Good point. There’s a fine line between objectivity and lying, and it’s sometimes not possible to give equal weight to both sides without actively conspiring to hide the truth. If I punch you in the face, it’s going to be harder to “objectively” point out that your face was in the way of my fist and that you owe me punitive damage for the skin cells I lost.</p>
<p>Told ya’ so. See my Post #3.</p>
<p>I love being right. ;)</p>
<p>Awesome news!</p>
<p>Very Happy - I, too, think a guilty verdict would have been a stretch.</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s enough she was found not guilty. On the way to trial this dr and sheriff caused her great financial harm and basically destroyed her career and standard of living.
I hope she wins this lawsuit.</p>
<p>Believe me as a nurse you would be shocked at the things we see and know. You would hope that we would report blatant malpractice, especially when the hospital or institution does nothing when you call it to their attention. The hospital is liable and at risk for fines and lawsuits when they do nothing to a physician who is practicing outside of his scope. Its is our nature and duty to protect patients from bad doctors, period.
Can you imagine what might have happened if the nurses didn’t take it to the next level? This doctor could have actually killed someone and if the nurses knew he practiced bad medicine and allowed it to continue, they are just as liable because they stood by and did nothing.</p>