Quote Originally Posted by DuncanONeil View Post
How about this? Your surgery goes fine. No complications. But during the surgery you woke up on the table during the operation. You decide to sue everyone you can get your hands on!

Frivolous or not?
Most people would find it incredibly traumatic to wake up in the middle of surgery and see themselves cut open. That doesn't even begin to cover the pain and sensations one might experience if they had general but no local anesthetic and woke up during a procedure. This is certainly an accident, but its probably akin to some forms of torture in terms of the level of trauma. Chances are good they are suing for things like the cost to see a psychiatrist about it, or lost wages because they can't sleep at night and don't function at work. I certainly think this isn't something that most people just shrug off and have not effect their life.

Do you think it would be fair if you woke up during surgery, experienced these horrific sensations you have nightmares about, the lack of sleep causes you to lose your job, you are seeing someone about it to try and get back to normal functioning and the result of all this is that you lost a lot of money in both salary and treatment?

Keep in mind that the most likely reason for someone to wake up during surgery is either improper dosing (miscalculating weight for instance) or severe delays (complications in the procedure and no addition to the anesthetic or other accommodations), so chances are good this is negligence.

As for suing everyone, its a common legal tactic to sue everyone so that attempts to pass the blame fail. If you sue just the doctor they blame the hospital, if you sue just the hospital they blame the doctor, if you sue the doctor and the hospital they blame the drug company, etc. I don't judge people for making strategically optimal decisions in the legal field, after all law and justice are often very different things.