Most physicians are competent, ethical, and highly skilled. However, medical doctors are human. Medical malpractice occurs when a doctor or other health care provider is negligent or fails to follow accepted standards of practice, causing harm to a patient.

Medicine is not without risk. Doctors cannot reasonably guarantee that their treatments will be successful, but they are expected to do what a reasonably qualified and prudent colleague would do under the same circumstances.

Although ancient peoples sometimes killed shamans who caused a patient's death, the idea of taking physicians to court for their medical misjudgments is a relatively new idea. The laws of ancient Greece and Rome, and those of Europe through the Middle Ages gave doctors immunity from punishment for their professional actions. In fourteenth century England, at a time that the Great Plague had eliminated a third of the population, people began to see...