"Campaigners for assisted suicide have emphasised that the new guidance will not change the law but make the current position clearer.
"We are hoping that this will be a positive step and will give Debbie clarity about the kind of factors and situations which will encourage the DPP to prosecute and which will not," said a spokesperson from Dignity in Dying, which supported Purdy's case.
"We are hoping that for people in the situation of Debbie and [her husband] Omar it will be a helpful piece of prosecuting guidance. We are hopeful that it will be a positive step forward."
Father wanted the apology to absolve his son of the responsibility for the suicide. Nothing will change the determination to die his son showed from childhood. If I were the gun owner, I would have countersued for the pain from having someone steal my gun and blast himself in my home. The suicider had no permission to take the gun. This verdict rewards a crime, theft.
"Following his son Brian’s suicide, Joseph Montes just wanted the boy’s stepfather to publish an apology as a warning to other people who keep guns in the house where they rear children.
While his request was clearly personal, the Baltimore scientist also viewed it as a public service that would “hit home.”
“That’s it,” Montes said last week, his face shaking. “That’s it.”
But Frank Eisler wouldn’t do it. He didn’t think the 16-year-old’s death — from a 9mm shot to the head in the early morning of April 11, 2005 — was his fault.
So Montes sued. And after a year and a half of litigation, including a contentious three-day jury trial that ended Friday in Baltimore City Circuit Court, he won: $50,000 and a public assignment of blame to the man he believes could have done more to save his troubled son. "
To end lawsuits for suicide because they contradict the modern, multi-factorial understanding of the causes of suicide, and indirectly hurt many unseen patients. The sole claim for suicide with merit involves assisting the suicide in violation of law.
This site is for defendants and defense lawyers in suicide malpractice suits, to improve defense expert testimony, perhaps to reduce losses in adverse settlements or verdicts.
These settlements and judgments devastate the practice of psychiatry. They cause the needless incarceration of thousands of suicidal patients without proof of benefit. The resulting defensive treatments consume a large fraction of the budget for wasteful treatment and starve proven preventive measures. These lawsuits are also morally wrong. They extort money from the party least influential in the many factors causing the suicide of the victim, the clinician trying to help. If they continue, the most suicidal and neediest patients will be avoided.
Explaining modern, multi-factorial understanding of the causes of suicide in plain language may result in more common sense judgments from jurors. The defendant may also prosecute, with licensing boards and in court, attorneys promulgating "junk science." The frivolous, malpractice lawsuit, because of profound, indirect impact on medical costs and life threatening errors, is another serious ethical lapse.
In systems closed to attorneys (e.g. the military), the rate of suicide may be cut by a large fraction reliably, quickly, at almost no additional expense.
A psychiatrist runs this site. It gives moral support to the civil defendant's determination to defend clinical care from vicious lawyer predators and their misleading expert collaborators.
