Legal Question in Medical Malpractice in Pennsylvania

Re: A doctor practicing medicine w/out a license

First, my condolences for this awful family tragedy.

Regarding criminal penalties, you can contact the PA Board of Medicine as well as the District Attorney�s Office for the County where the treatment occurred.

There may be two civil actions (if the person was practicing psychiatry) :

1) A �Tarasoff� �duty to warn� case for the murder. This is a narrow duty requiring a threat to a specific person. This would be difficult to establish under these circumstances.

2) A psychiatric malpractice case for failure to prevent the suicide. This may appear more straight forward case to establish, but you may imagine that juries may not be sympathetic to this kind of a suicide. This case also has its problems as a psychiatric expert would need to establish that a licensed psychiatrist wouldlikely have been able to prevent this event.

The other problem in finding an attorney to take this as a �civil� case is whether the unlicensed physician had assets.

If you are considering a civil action, be prepared to make a number of calls to attorneys who handle psychiatric malpractice.

Again, my condolences, I wish you the best in this terrible circumstance.