Responsabilité médicale et expertise : de la loi du Talion à la loi Kouchner

Despite the appearance from the Mesopotamian era of medical responsibility, an apparent impunity of the doctor will be in place until the 19th century. In France, it will be necessary to wait for the Napoleonic codes of 1804 and 1810 in order to clearly dissociate the civil and criminal responsibilities of the doctor. If liability for fault remains the rule in medical matters today, the concept of liability without fault introduced by the industrial revolution and the legislation on industrial accidents was taken up by the Kouchner law of 2002. It definitively opens the way to a statutory and legal compensation for non-faulty medical accidents under national solidarity via the National Office for Compensation for Medical Accidents (ONIAM) and the Conciliation and Compensation Commissions (CCI). Expertise in medical liability is now the backbone of the victim compensation process. It guides the magistrate in the recognition of faulty or non-faulty medical liability and helps him to set the amount of compensation allocated with regard to bodily injury.     

Responsabilité médicale et angioplastie coronaire : à propos de deux affaires judiciaires

Coronary angioplasty is a constantly evolving discipline whose high technical standards suggest that it is at high risk of accidents and legal claims. In this work, we discussed two judicial cases in which the responsibility of the interventional cardiologist was involved. Coronary angioplasty was the discussed therapeutic act in both cases, resulting in the death of the patients due to inter-procedural complications. Through our analysis, we have observed that in matters of medical liability, court experts will first verify that the doctor has fulfilled his means of obligation. When an interventional cardiology procedure is prescribed, they will rule on the validity of the indication, the conditions under which it was performed, and finally the management of the complication. The majority of coronary angioplasty accidents are therefore considered by the experts as medical hazards. On the other hand, the management of complications is much more often the subject of criticism.