Dr Moeller Leaves Town Which Stood By Him

wrussell · 04-07-2009, 01:38 AM

In March 2005 the Australian High Court ruled in favour of continuing the Australian rule prohibiting client suits against their lawyer - no matter how negligent their courtroom conduct. The Court extended the rule to cover out-of-court advice given by lawyers.

fatpom · 04-07-2009, 03:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gollywobbler

Hi Nigel????

Dr Moeller is German. Their "system" is as good as, if not better than, the Aussie "system." What is so wunnerful and special about Australia that Dr Moeller should tolerate less in Oz than he could get in Germany? He has been treantig Australia's sick, not Germany's sick, lately.

Cheers

Gill

I think you missed my point. What i was trying to point out is that many Aussies don't so much mind Aussies working the system but hate it when others do, especially those nasty little foriegners.

fatpom... definately not a Nigel

**Nigelinoz** · 04-07-2009, 03:22 AM

Quote:

fatpom... definately not a Nigel

???????
What exactly is a "Nigel"?

Jamie Smith · 04-07-2009, 04:40 AM

Gill it was never a question of law, it was a question of ethics. You've implied that teh law is all there is to it. Not so. There are issues of genuine intent in the visa grant system, and good faith in employment relationships.

Moeller has disregarded both. He was offered an extremely generous salary, five times more than the average wage of those he is asked to treat.

It would appear that only now he has made the Australian Govt resposnible for his sons costs that he is interested in quality of life. He need not work so hard to fund the care of his son.

I think he was being a little deceitful during the process.

He asked for PR to allow him to stay and continue the work he professed he wanted to do so much, and his son was the obstacle to getting the PR. Now he has PR, the work is apparently not so important to him as he initially made out.

This is, to me, a rort of the visa system and an act of bad faith in abusing the employer's goodwill. It makes him no different to the students that fake their job offers and work expereince to get PR visas.

Hardly the type of character we want to see in a migrant.

itcouldbeworse · 04-07-2009, 05:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jamie Smith

Hardly the type of character we want to see in a migrant.

And particularly not in a doctor where ethics should count above all else.

kev

**Gollywobbler** · 04-07-2009, 09:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wrussell

In March 2005 the Australian High Court ruled in favour of continuing the Australian rule prohibiting client suits against their lawyer - no matter how negligent their courtroom conduct. The Court extended the rule to cover out-of-court advice given by lawyers.

Hi Westly

Are you serious? I am not suggesting you are wrong but I had no idea that this is so. My mind boggles. Why should lawyers be exempt from negligence claims? Does the same go for Aussie doctors as well? If Aussie lawyers are exempt from negligence claims what is the point of insisting that they must have PI insurance? Does this rule extend to non-lawyer RMAs as well?

Baffled.

Gill

fatpom · 04-07-2009, 09:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gollywobbler

Hi Westly

Are you serious? I am not suggesting you are wrong but I had no idea that this is so. My mind boggles. Why should lawyers be exempt from negligence claims? Does the same go for Aussie doctors as well? If Aussie lawyers are exempt from negligence claims what is the point of insisting that they must have PI insurance? Does this rule extend to non-lawyer RMAs as well?
Baffled.
Gill

I thought it practically impossible to get a lawyer who would act on your behalf against another lawyer in the UK???
This is what I'd been told although don't know it for a fact?

**Nigelinoz** · 04-07-2009, 09:51 AM

Hi Gill,
Westly is correct.
From http://www.adf.com.au/archive.php?doc_id=124

Quote:

The Australian High Court says Lawyers can't be sued Shortly after ruling that a council was negligent when a surfer became a paraplegic in a tragic surfing accident, the High Court has ruled 6:1 that lawyers can’t be sued for negligence. The court said no to a plaintiff who wanted to sue his lawyer, because he was advised to plead guilty to a rape in 1996. He was eventually acquitted on a re-trial. The High Court stressed that its main concern in protecting lawyers from immunity was " injury to the public interest" because finalised matters could be reopened. Mr Ray Ross QC of the Law Council of Australia is reported as saying that without immunity " litigation would become lengthy, very complex and even more costly than it already is"
SMH Friday March 11, 2005

I think this is the relevant case law.
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/HCA/2005/12.html

**Gollywobbler** · 04-07-2009, 10:06 AM

Hi Jamie

Reading the press report supplied by itcouldbe worse, my impression is that two different contracts are involved here.

My impression is that there was the original contract under which Dr Moeller was not able to have a private practice because the 457 visa would have prevented that, Once the ENS visa was granted there was no reason for Dr Moeller not to have his own, separate, private practice in addition to his contract with the Government hospital.

However to have a private practice as well Dr Moeller needed "visiting rights" at the hospital according to the employers. It seems that they sent Dr Moeller a draft contract which would allow him to continue to do his normal work for the public hospital only plus have a private practice on top.

This new contract would have had Dr Moeller on call 24/7, irrespective of the fact that the contract might also have given Dr Moeller a much higher pay package than working for the Govt alone would have provided.

I suspect that what happened was that the new contract effectively said that Dr Moeller could have the visiting rights but that any private work would have to be done outside of the hours contracted for between Dr M and the hospital and that this proved to be the short straw between them.

I don't know how doctors' contracts work even in E&W. I've never seen one. I have used a couple of specialist doctors, though. Becasue BUPA were paying, I was told to go and see both doctors in Harley Street. I went to Harley Street during normal working hours. However both of these specialists were NHS consultants as well. One was the boss in his field at the Whittington, which is an NHS hospital in London. I don't know which hospital was Base Camp for the other doctor but I do know that specialists in the UK are regarded with great suspicion by GPs if they are not consultants in NHS hospitals as well as whatever they do privately.

Until now I have never wondered about the contractual arrangements whereby NHS consultants can be strolliing around Harley Street at times when it would seem logical that they should be at the NHS hospitals which give them their kudos and presumably at least 50% of their income.

My suspicion is that to keep the amount that the NHS has to pay down, it might well be that the consultants are not required to do 40 hours a week for the NHS. The one based at the Whittington was a gynae and I needed a minor op. He said he would do it at the Whittington which surprised me since I wasn't an NHS patient so I assumed we would have to use the Lister, the Cromwell or one of the other private hospitals. Presumably this guy had rights to treat his private patients at the Whittington, using NHS equipment, nurses etc.

One of the nurses on here or docboat might know what the normal drill is with the contracts in the UK because it sounds like Germany and the UK may be the same but that the arrangements are different in Oz. (In fact I believe that Westly's wife is a specialist doctor and if I am right then Westly might know how this works in Oz.)

However I do have the impression that the relationship between Dr Moeller and the employers fell apart because of a new contract, not because of the one which was in place when the visa was granted.

Cheers

Gill

**Gollywobbler** · 04-07-2009, 10:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fatpom

I thought it practically impossible to get a lawyer who would act on your behalf against another lawyer in the UK???
This is what I'd been told although don't know it for a fact?

Hi Fatpom

Not so. Plenty of lawyers deal with cases of negligence by other lawyers. Obviously these cases are litigious and I've never been a litigator but I do know that one lot of litigators act for the aggrieved clients and the others defend the solicitors. I imagine that the litigators divvy up in the same way with the medical negligence cases as well.

One doesn't hear much about these cases because it is extremely difficult to prove negligence in E&W. The presumption is that the expert has not acted negligently, which creates a very difficult hurdle for the aggreieved client or patient because it is very hard to say what the outcome would have been if the matter had been handled differently, plus the Court will not entertain claims of loss of bargain. Richard Branson has tried it and he failed. I heard that he did a land deal which went wrong on him commercially. He tried to sue the solicitors who had acted for him on the land deal. Apparently the evidence showed that the solicitors had written to Branson advising him that the deal was commercially duff and they advised that he should not get involved with it. He insisted on going ahead with it in spite of the advice and lost a lot of money. Then he tried to blame Wilde Sapte who did most of the Branson/Virgin work at the time. The court held that Branson was whingeing about the fact that he chose to do a deal which he had been advised not to do so he lost the litigation.

In the USA and Germany the burden of proof is reversed. The presumption is that the expert has been negligent unless the expert can prove otherwise. Hence there is much more negligence litigation in both of those countries than there is in E&W.

Cheers

Gill