While the title of this article is intentionally ironical, the inappropriate use of an injured plaintiff's personal or medical history to confuse, mislead and engender bias in juries is omnipresent in medical malpractice litigation. The uses to which defendants may put a particular personal or medical history are numerous, but each is, by design, targeted to encourage the jury to blame the plaintiff—or the plaintiff's decedent—for their own medical condition, thereby absolving the defendant health care provider of any wrongdoing.

Permitting defense counsel to recite a litany of health conditions having nothing to do with the case at bar is a formula certain to produce confusion and prejudice to the detriment of our clients. Lawyers defending these cases are quite properly enamored of this tactic that takes the jury's collective focus away from the negligent medical provider and incites the types of confirmation biases harbored by many jurors.