Briefs

HARD CASH FOR VICTIMS OF CRIME

In Missouri, if crime does not pay, criminals will. Twenty-six dollars to be exact. Under a state law that went into effect last month, any person convicted of any crime is automatically required to pay $26 into a crime-victim compensation fund. The curious amount, which includes $1 to defray the court's collecting expenses, was chosen because it was considered a debt to society that almost any criminal could afford to pay. Supporters of the measure estimate that approximately $250,000 will be raised annually. Crime victims and survivors can collect a maximum of $10,000 for hospital bills not covered by insurance or for loss of income, although payments will not begin until 1983 to allow the fund to accumulate. More than half the states now have programs to compensate crime victims, and the idea had been bandied about in Missouri for four years. But it did not get anywhere until supporters heard that Pennsylvania, like a dozen other states, was raising the money for the victims by fining the victimizers. In these tax-tightening times, that sort of "sock-it-to-the-criminal" idea is likely to spread beyond the Show Me state.

THERE GOES THE JUDGE

Judge Constantine P. (Dick) Lantz, 47, was all set for his inauguration as president of the American Judges Association, a nationwide organization of city, county, state and federal judges. The newest Supreme Court Justice, Sandra Day O'Connor, had accepted his invitation to swear him in. But three days before the ceremony, several newspaper stories reported that Lantz had been reprimanded last October for judicial misconduct by Florida's Judicial Qualifications Commission; their action and a $3,000 fine was upheld by a unanimous vote of the state supreme court. In a plea bargain that got 13 charges against him reduced to four, a teary-eyed Lantz admitted that while on the bench, he "was guilty of arrogance and failed to exhibit patience, courtesy and dignity to litigants." He had also been accused of such judicial peccadillos as eating and talking on the telephone while presiding in court. The judge did not contest a charge that he had attempted to solicit a campaign contribution from a Miami lawyer who practiced frequently in his court, nor did he refute another charge that he granted a $10,700 legal fee to a friend after the man had withdrawn as an attorney in the case. When this news broke, Justice O'Connor suddenly developed a "calendar conflict," and on the eve of the A.J.A. ceremony two weeks ago, Lantz announced his resignation because "the adverse publicity would interfere with my effectiveness as president." But a question remains. How come a man who had been rated the worst local judge in a 1980 poll of the Dade County Bar Association was elected to the A.J.A.'s top spot in the first place?

NOW, PATIENT RECALLS?

Skyrocketing medical malpractice insurance rates have turned many doctors into devout lawyer haters. And the M.D.s may soon get even angrier because a bimonthly legal magazine, Case & Comment, is touting yet another "new frontier in medical malpractice": the duty of a physician to warn former patients of any newly discovered danger in drugs or devices that the doctor prescribed in previous years. The magazine article dredges up a little noted 1978 California Court of Appeals decision called Tresemer vs. Barke, which involved the notorious Dalkon Shield intrauterine device. Within two years after Donna Sue Tresemer had a shield inserted in 1972, researchers were learning that the device could be dangerous, but Dr. Morton Barke never contacted Tresemer to warn her. When she finally did have it removed in 1975, she suffered complications that, her lawyer claimed, entitled her to damages from the doctor. A California appeals court endorsed the theory and ruled, apparently for the first time, that a malpractice suit could succeed in such a case because of the "continuing status of the physician-patient [relationship] where the danger arose from that relationship." Tresemer's case ultimately ended without any award of damages for other, unrelated reasons. But the principle stands. Will attorneys try to expand it in other courts? After hearing about the Case & Comment article, Stanley Schwartz, a top Detroit medical malpractice lawyer, fairly bubbled over. "If read broadly, the case could change the way doctors practice medicine; it would cause them to search their files to find patients treated years ago," he says. "At first it may seem ridiculous. On the other hand, if the doctors don't warn the patients, who will? If GM has to recall cars, why shouldn't doctors have to recall patients?"

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