The Practice of Lviv District Court and the Lviv Court of Appeals in Cases on Medical Practitioner’s Malpractice in 1919–1939

Abstract

The legal aspects of healthcare in the Lviv oblast during the time it was under the reign of Second Rzeczpospolita Polska (1919–1939) remain underinvestigated. Alongside with the rise of lawyers’ and scholars’ attention to the aspects of history of medical law and the protection of patients’ rights, the question of disputes in the sphere of healthcare in various time periods (i.e. medical practitioners’ malpractice, lawsuits against hospital sickness funds, as legal entities because of negligence of the hospital sickness fund physicians, occurring within the provision of medical treatment, or conducting medical treatment without the patient’s consent etc.) has undoubtedly risen. The history of medical law of Ukraine remains underinvestigated. The practice of the courts operating in the Lviv oblast in 1919–1939 in cases on medical practitioners’ malpractice has yet not become the object of the research of Ukrainian scholars to date, analogically to the period, when the Lviv oblast was under the reign of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire in 1867–1918, or even in earlier times. The practice of the courts of the Lviv oblast in cases on medical practitioners’ malpractice in the period of 1919–1939 illustratively displays that civil lawsuits relating to medical malpractice were not rare ones. What is more, the court practice of those days featured criminal trials against medical practitioners for committing severe negligence, or illegitimate abortions. For a more complex understanding of medical practitioners in Austrian-Hungarian law by the reader, we will provide a brief explanation relating to it as well, in particular, on basis of those-days case law.