Exploring Legal Defences to Medical Malpractice Claims: Which Way Nigeria?

Abstract

Medical treatments and procedures entail that every physician and healthcare provider engaged in treatment or patients’ diagnosis must exercise duty of care and absence of this duty of care or any deficiency in that duty of care may amount to medical malpractice and can impose liability. Such malpractice may be derived from a doctor’s lack of training or experience or from a physician’s carelessness or inadvertence. Medical malpractice required that the physician had a duty, the physician breached the duty, there was harm to the patient, and that the harm was caused by the physician’s breach of duty. Where the above conditions are met, there are still some special legal defences that can be used in court to exonerate the physician. These defences include contributory negligence, assumption of the risk, clinical innovation, Good Samaritan, respectable minority, two schools thought, to mention but these. This paper aimed at exploring these legal defences to medical malpractices through doctrinal legal research methodology achieved through the use of textbooks, articles in journals and internet materials. It found that medical practitioners are oblivion of some of the defences available to them in medical malpractice cases and claims confronting them on daily basis. It further found that these defences are not generally codified into a single statute. The paper recommended the statutory codification or recognition of the defences available to medical practitioner facing medical malpractice claims. It concluded that knowledge of these legal defences can help medical practitioners minimise their risk of litigation when caring for patients.