On the hot seat: Physician expert witnesses

With scrutiny high and the other side out to get the "hired gun," court appearances can be a trial for physicians who serve as expert witnesses.

By Tanya Albert, AMNews staff. April 8, 2002.

Chicago rheumatologist and internist Scott Kale, MD, knows he's in for a long day when he treads into the courtroom as a medical expert witness.

He's reviewed the case and knows exactly what his opinion is. But Dr. Kale -- who has a law degree, too -- also knows that lawyers from the other side are going to ask him questions designed to throw him off course.

They'll ask the same question nine different ways, hoping to get him to say something that veers from his originally stated opinion. He sits up straight in the stand and listens closely to each question before answering.

"It's exhausting," said Dr. Kale, who spends about three hours on the stand in the shortest of cases. "Every word counts. You really have to concentrate. You can never relax, because it can always be tricky."

Physicians take the stand in many types of cases: medical malpractice, where they may be testifying for or against colleagues; paternity suits, in which they are DNA experts; and criminal cases, in which they can give testimony on topics ranging from the cause of death in a homicide to the sanity of the person on trial.

Each arena is demanding. But medical malpractice cases -- in which one physician must testify against another physician -- can be particularly uncomfortable.

The years when doctors would not testify for plaintiffs in medical malpractice cases because they didn't want to break a code of silence are long gone. Although a physician still may not want to testify against a colleague in his own community for professional reasons, many physicians are willing to step forward to testify in cases where they don't know or work with the physician on trial. They say it's a matter of social responsibility if the facts show that a patient was harmed because of negligence. [...]