By Zack Needles
Of the Legal Staff
It's been more than a week and a half since an en banc state Superior Court panel issued what has the potential to be a landmark case in the largely undeveloped area of "preconception torts," and I'm more than a little surprised it hasn't received more play in the mainstream press or legal blogosphere.
In fact, it seems like only a handful of people even know about it, even though we covered it for The Legal.
In its June 28 opinion in Matharu v. Muir, the Superior Court ruled that doctors owe a third-party duty of care to their patients' "future, unborn children," a duty Pennsylvania courts had previously only extended to nonpatient third-parties in cases involving communicable diseases.
According to several lawyers I've spoken to, the ruling could conceivably open the door for duty-of-care expansions in other types of medical malpractice cases.
This, those lawyers told me, is quite a big deal.
But since the Matharu opinion came down, I've seen only a smattering of short articles in general circulation newspapers and exactly one legal blog on the case.
It's possible the ruling simply flew under the radar, coming out late on a Tuesday in mid-summer, but to the extent that anyone saw the opinion and didn't think it noteworthy, those people might want to take a second look.
You can read more about why this decision is important in a follow-up story titled, "Preconception Duty a Significant Step, Med Mal Lawyers Say," scheduled to appear in Tuesday's Pennsylvania Law Weekly section of The Legal.
What say you, readers? Did you see the first story and skip over it? Do you not think this issue matters? Did you not see the first story at all? E-mail me your response at [email protected].
Zack Needles is a reporter for The Legal. He can be contacted at [email protected] or 215-557-2493. Follow him on Twitter at ZNeedlesTLI.
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