Pick Your "Friends" Carefully

As Texans know, the ability to sue a negligent doctor or hospital is virtually impossible now that the tort reformers (read: insurance executives) got their $250K caps on non-economic damages (i.e., you can sue if you make a lot of money like an investment banker, but if you are a housewife, file clerk or bookkeeper, your damages are negligible).

Today, the
Houston Chronicle exposed one of Texans for Lawsuit Reform's spokesmen Dr. Forney Fleming who advocated against med mal lawsuits. He failed to mention that he was reprimanded and fined by the Texas Medical Board and still has complaints pending:

He was eager to bash plaintiffs' lawyers, particularly those who targeted doctors. So TLR, a business group that has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars bashing plaintiffs' lawyers and winning restrictions on judgments against physicians and other defendants, signed him up as a volunteer speaker.

Fleming, however, left out some details of his professional life, including his reprimand and $7,500 fine by the Texas Medical Board in 2004 for misdiagnosing what turned out to be bone cancer in a 16-year-old girl's leg. The leg later was amputated. The board also accused Fleming of providing substandard care to six other patients, including an 81-year-old woman with a fractured hip. That formal complaint was still pending when he let his medical license lapse and retired last December. And, according to state records, Fleming was sued or threatened with suits for malpractice three times. All were settled out of court or resolved through mediation for undisclosed terms.

None of his professional problems was mentioned on the TLR Web site, but his profile was removed last week, within an hour after I informed a TLR spokeswoman about them.

Here is a link to his "removed" TLR profile by way of Burnt Orange Report and Texas Watch: Dr. Forney Fleming, Texans for Lawsuit Reform Spokesman

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