Legal Medicine

- Branch of Medicine which deals with the application of medical knowledge to

the purposes of law and in the administration of justice.
- It is the application of basic and clinical, medical and paramedical sciences to
elucidate legal matters.
- Legal medicine is primarily the application of medicine to legal cases while
forensic medicine concerns with the application of medical science to
elucidate legal problems.

Medical Jurisprudence

- Medical jurisprudence (j'uris-law, prudentia-knowledge) denotes knowledge

of law in relation to the practice of medicine. It concerns with the study of
the rights, duties and obligations of a medical practitioner with particular
reference to those arising from doctor-patient relationship.

Rules of Court (Sec. 5, Rule 138)

- Medical Jurisprudence is one of the subjects in the law course before

admission to the bar examination.

Scope of Legal Medicine

- It is the application of medical and paramedical sciences as demanded by law

and administration of justice.

Nature of the Study of Legal Medicine:

- A knowledge of legal medicine means the ability to acquire facts, the power
to arrange those facts in their logical order, and to draw a conclusion from
the facts which may be useful in the administration of justice.
- A physician who specializes or is involved primarily with medicolegal duties
is known as medical jurist, (medical examiner, medicolegal officer, medico-
legal expert).
- Health officers, medical officers of Jaw enforcement agencies and members
of the medical staff of accredited hospital are authorized by law to perform
autopsies (Sec. 95, P.D. 856, Code of Sanitation).
- However, "it is the duty of every physician, when called upon by the judicial
authorities, to assist in the administration of justice on matters which are
medico-legal in character" (Sec. 2, Art. Ill, Code of Medical Ethics of the
Medical Profession of the Philippines).

Distinction Between an Ordinary Physician and a Medical Jurist:

1. An ordinary physician sees an injury or disease on the point of view of treatment,

while a medico-jurist sees injury or disease onthe point of view of cause.
2. The purpose of an ordinary physician examining a patient is to arrive at a definite
diagnosis so that appropriate treatment can be instituted, while the purpose of the
medical jurist in examining a patient is to include those bodily lesions in his report
and testify before the court or before an investigative body; thus giving justice to
whom it is due.

3. Minor or trivial injuries are usually ignored by an ordinary clinician inasmuch as

they do not require usual treatment. Superficial abrasions, small contusion and
other minor injuries will heal without medication. However, a medical jurist must
record all bodily injuries even if they are small or minor because these injuries may
be proofs to qualify the crime or to justify the act.

Examples: a. the presence of physical injuries of a victim of sexual abuse may be

presumptive proof that force was applied in the commission thereof, hence the
crime committed must be rape.

b. The presence of physical injuries on the offender of the crime of physical

injuries may be a proof that the victim acted in self-defense.

Elements of a Medical Negligence Case

A medical negligence case is a type of claim to redress a wrong committed by a

medical professional, that has caused bodily harm to or the death of a patient.
There are four elements involved in a medical negligence case, namely: duty,
breach, injury, and proximate causation.

a. Duty refers to the standard of behavior which imposes restrictions on one's

conduct. The standard in turn refers to the amount of competence associated
with the proper discharge of the profession. A physician is expected to use at
least the same level of care that any other reasonably competent doctor
would use under the same circumstances.
b. Breach of duty occurs when the physician fails to comply with these
professional standards.
c. If injury results to the patient as a result of this breach, the physician is
answerable for negligence.
d. In order that there may be a recovery for an injury, however, it must be
shown that the "injury for which recovery is sought must be the legitimate
consequence of the wrong done; the connection between the negligence and
the injury must be a direct and natural sequence of events, unbroken by
intervening efficient causes." In other words, the negligence must be the
proximate cause of the injury. For, "negligence, no matter in what it consists,
cannot create a right of action unless it is the proximate cause of the injury
complained of" and "the proximate cause of an injury is that cause, which, in
natural and continuous sequence, unbroken by any efficient intervening
cause, produces the injury, and without which the result would not have
occurred."