Conduct, a corrupt and hideous state agency empowered by awful state laws, by legislation aimed only at sacking, wiping out professionals, ruining lives. It is equivalent to legal murder of many, especially doctors; all made ‘legal’ by state legislators, all lawyers.
“Remember, Ken?” We watched together last week, on PBS, Stanley Cramer’s Judgment at Nuremberg. Spencer Tracy, as Presiding Judge Haywood, in his closing comments before sentencing the four villain Nazi judges to prison-for-life, tells them that existing directives from above (called Laws, a Government!) do not justify the individual judges for committing acts, for issuing rulings, against decency, humanity and morality, against basic human rights.
“And now in the US the similarities of how many innocent professionals are also literally destroyed have not been acknowledged; it is all ignored and forgotten! In the same film, the German defense lawyer played by Maximillian Schell, blames ‘others’ -besides Germany- the US, Russia and even the Vatican, for committing too, ‘legal’ atrocities against humanity. Indeed our Constitution, a legislation, the Law, existing nasty but ‘legal’ state laws, justify ‘officially’ evil policies carried out by Government agencies, by its lawyers, to destroy precious, dear professional lives, often innocent. The law enforcers thus enjoy a free hand to kill, wipe out lives…”
Both paused.
“You are really bitter and disgusted with our system, aren’t you?” He asked.
“I think as much as you! I wish I could…” After another pause, she went on:
“By the way, Ken, I have a friend, a woman child neurologist that I don’t think you’ve met yet, being shaken up by our State Health Department. I want to ask your opinion about what I know of her case. She fears for her license, though she does not think she’s done anything wrong -just a disliked report she wrote on a tough kid- but perhaps she has been targeted by state officials for her leaning towards ‘our genes’ as the cause of children’s learning and behavior problems -and she is often against the famous ‘Early Intervention’- and they are after her head. Perhaps you may have some ideas or concrete steps for her to take to shake them off her back. Any advice I can pass along?”
“Those cases are very tough once the State gets their eyes on them. The Department, OPC, is run more by lawyers than doctors. And they have nearly total control of each case rendering the accused professionals, AND the targeted doctor’s own lawyer, totally powerless. They can’t extricate themselves without a stain in their record at a minimum, and often worse, they end up losing their license.”
“Why?”
“Because they have managed to talk their lawyer-colleagues in the state legislature into drafting state laws that are nearly unassailable, meant to call the process ‘legal,’ to facilitate the sacking of the accused with total disregard for their civil rights!… They are like those Nazi judges you just mentioned, with total power to sack, regardless of any exculpatory evidence. Like by getting access to ALL the records of the accused -to build their case against him or her- even when there are no criminal charges, no real professional blunder, illegal or dangerous conduct and they have no proof of anything; they are masters at suppressing evidence. They disregard witnesses and experts who favor the accused. Does ‘transparency’ exist for them? Transparency? What is that!”
“But that is unconstitutional, immoral,” said Barbara, “Isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is,” her husband went on, “and since their ways to hang the doc are written into the state law, they appear perfectly O.K., all’s perfectly legal; the ‘morality’ of such laws does not even count and if the accused brings the case to a law suit, no state judge touches them, not even the Court of Appeals.”
“Why again?”
“Because the state discipline department -through the dozens of lawyers in the State Attorney General’s office, often a band of heartless hoodlums- manages to easily dismiss every case, just about always, in front of a single judge, without jurors, just on paper, wrapping the dismissal in technicalities that hit the accused and his counsel like an unassailable cement wall.”
“And the federal courts?”
“Neither the federal ‘District’ courts nor the federal appeals ‘Circuit’ courts touch the subject either. They dismiss these cases on paper, without a trial, often bringing up sovereignty, executive privilege of the state -‘eminent domain’ they call it- on which the federal government and its courts supposedly does not interfere with the state.”
“Even if the accused is denied civil rights?”
“That’s right. Even if those state laws are totally against the most basic civil rights -and they are-, the federal courts often look the other way.”
“So the doctor targeted and under investigation, the accused, has no chance with the state courts! Is that it?”
“Yes,” her husband the judge admitted.
“Even in your court?”
“That’s right! In such cases we judges, even if sympathetic to the doctor-in-trouble, find ourselves with our hands tied. Like judge Janning in Nuremberg! So most of my colleagues recuse themselves from taking medical misconduct cases to possibly side against the State, our employer!… I probably would too…”
“But if my friend sues the state, would she have a chance of getting her case at least heard? Wouldn’t YOU let her present her case, hear her out and look at all her evidence or lack of it?”
“Well, like most of my colleagues, I don’t pick the cases. They are assigned to me by our local Chief Judge of the State Supreme Court -here it would be supposedly judge Amalfi- though in reality his court clerks make the assignments for him. And you know that if I happen to know about the case before hand that I could easily recuse myself from taking it.”
“Unfortunately, said Barbara, though my friend has contemplated dropping her lawyer and going public to the press and then sue the State Health Department, she realizes that the public is not sympathetic to ‘rich docs in trouble’ in the first place; that cases like hers make good gossip, and they and the press often take the side of the accuser as the underdog. They always presume that the accused doctor ’must have done something wrong,’ that ‘the state does not go after you for nothing!”…
“And if they end up really staining her record, (‘who cares about a disgraced doc!’), nobody will lift a finger for her,” admitted her husband Ken, “not her colleagues or her med society or the big societies like the AMA or the ACLU or even the Media. And as far as fighting her case in court, she probably will have to contend first with ‘internal hearings’ held -like Internal Affairs in the police force- in front of a Board presided by one of their sacking lawyers, internally called ‘Administrative Law Judges’ to impress and cow the accused. And remember, Barbara, that all this is very legal now as manufactured by the state legislators, by more lawyers!… Sad!”
“It is not just sad, it is unbelievable. If I were a judge I’d find it intolerable!…” said his wife Barbara.
“And I hear,” Ken went on, “that feisty doctors, for simply not admitting having done something wrong, for refusing to cooperate, for fighting them, find themselves into worse trouble as they, at the State Health Department, are really vindictive and retaliate with vengeance against ‘difficult’ docs towards their total destruction.”
After doing the dishes and pans at the sink while Ken at her side was drying them, both had a small glass of sweet Sherry as she went on:
“My friend has told me that those state disciplinarians have what they call ‘A First Count of Misconduct’ against her on account of that disputed report of hers and that they are now demanding from her to have access to ALL the records of her office. She is fighting them on that, but they’ve given her a deadline. If she does not comply, that THAT will be considered a ‘Second Count’ and THAT will be automatically grounds to pull her license… So, what she can do to keep them out of her office?”
“She