New law: Zero Accountability for Medical Negligence (when you live through it)
Thanks to the Florida Legislature, negligence is now accepted as the new normal in the Florida health care system, for anyone who lives through it. What once was a problem for a smaller subsection of people (known as Florida Free Kills, defined as anyone who died from negligence and was over age 25 with no minor children) now applies to all persons who live through medical negligence. As of July 1st, there is no accountability unless the negligence is defined as gross. Negligence categories have now been redefined. The new gross negligence definition is extremely subjective and therefore any case can be thrown out and not heard in any court of law in Florida. See the new definitions below.
Standards of Care and Degrees of Negligence Courts have developed general definitions for the degrees of negligence.
Slight Negligence
Slight negligence is generally defined to mean the failure to exercise a great amount of care typical of an extraordinarily prudent person.
Ordinary Negligence
Ordinary negligence, which is also referred to as simple negligence, is the standard of care applied to the vast majority of negligence cases. It is characterized as the conduct that a reasonable and prudent person would know could possibly cause injury to a person or property.
Gross Negligence
Gross negligence means the failure of a person to exercise slight care.
Florida courts have defined gross negligence as the type of conduct that a “reasonably prudent person knows will probably and most likely result in injury to another” person.
In order for a plaintiff to succeed on a claim involving gross negligence, he or she must prove: Circumstances, which, when taken together, create a clear and present danger; Awareness that the danger exists; and A conscious voluntary act or omission to act that will likely result in an injury.
Effectively what they are saying is that it is perfectly acceptable to be negligent, as long as you are not aware of your negligence. There is no re-education. Negligent practitioners will not be corrected, rather they will continue on without being required to learn from their mistakes and without punishment, unless someone can prove that they knew better.
Wrong is wrong. Ignorance is not an excuse for causing injury.
The burden of proof now lies with the injured.
The offender gets off scott free, unless they admit they were consciously causing harm.
To avoid a lawsuit a practitioner merely has to say "I was unaware"
This philosophy is incredibly wrong from a moral standpoint. It is obvious that the legislators who voted in favor of this were influenced by hospital and medical political action committees who donate campaign contributions to ensure that legislators see things their way.