New Delhi: The Supreme Court has held
that doctors cannot be "unnecessarily harassed" by patients or
their claimants to extract compensation for death or
disability due to alleged medical negligence.
A bench of Justices Dalveer Bhandari and H S Bedi said
it was the bounden duty of the society to ensure that doctors
peform their duties without apprehension of malicious
prosecution though the interests of the patients should be
paramount.
"It is our bounden duty and obligation of the civil
society to ensure that the medical professionals are not
unnecessarily harassed or humiliated so that they can perform
their professional duties without fear and apprehension.
"The medical practitioners at times also have to be
saved from such a class of complainants who use criminal
process as a tool for pressurizing the medical
professionals/hospitals, particularly private hospitals or
clinics, for extracting uncalled for compensation. Such
malicious proceedings deserve to be discarded against the
medical practitioners," Justices Bhandari writing the
judgement said.
The apex court made the remarks while dismissing the
Rs 45-lakh compensatiion claim of Kusum Latha, widow of R K
Sharma, Senior Operations Manager in Indian Oil Corporation's
Marketing Division who, according to the claimants, died due
to negligence committed by the doctors of Batra Hospital and
Medical Research Centre.
-PTI
First Published: Wednesday, February 10, 2010, 21:27