Blogging Leads Doctor to Make Malpractice Settlement
The Boston Globe called it "a Perry Mason moment updated for the Internet age."
It came during a malpractice case in a Boston courtroom, when well-known pediatrician Robert P. Lindeman made the dramatic confession that he was the blogger known as Flea.
Flea, jurors in the case didn't know, was the screen name for a blogger who had written often and at length about a trial remarkably similar to the one that was going on in the courtroom that day. In his blog, Flea had ridiculed the plaintiff's case and the plaintiff's lawyer. He had revealed the defense strategy. He had accused members of the jury of dozing.
The next morning, May 15, Lindeman agreed to what local experts called "a substantial settlement" with the parents of a 12-year-old boy who had died of complications from diabetes. Otherwise, now that Lindeman's secret was out, the plaintiffs' lawyer could let the jury know what he had said about them and the judicial process.
Elizabeth N. Mulvey, the plaintiffs' lawyer who asked the question that prompted Lindeman's confession, said what shocked her about his blog, drfleablog, was that so many other bloggers who knew little or nothing about the case came to Flea's defense. Other defense lawyers say they always check online for things their clients may have written, but it's hard to do when they blog under assumed names.
As for the drfleablog, well, as of this morning it is completely empty. But as my grandfather would say, that's closing the barn door after the horse has already run away.
11:46 AM ET | 05-31-2007 | permalink
