Victim or Gold-Digger: Rock Hudson's Former Partner Marc Christian MacGinnis Passes
The man who brought suit against Rock Hudson for concealing his AIDS -- Marc Christian MacGinnis - has died in Los Angeles of complications brought on by smoking cigarettes. Despite MacGinnis' exposure to the HIV virus, he may never have contracted HIV; at any rate, the papers report that he did not die of complications arising from his exposure.
Why discuss MacGinnis in a blog about negotiation and dispute resolution? Because we all have an imperfect understanding of the reasons people bring suit against one another.
Are most plaintiffs golddiggers as MacGinnis was so often said to be? Or have they suffered what they believe to be an injustice -- which is the reason they turn to the "justice" system for vindication?
Everyone has his or her own story and at MacGinnis' death we are told his "side." Yes, he sued Hudson for monetary compensation. But did something else motivate him to bring suit? Had he been treated unfairly? Were his fears of a devastating illness and agonizing death reasonable ones? Could an award of damages "make him whole"?
Today the Los Angeles Times once again recounts the series of events that brought Marc Christian MacGinnis to the Los Angeles Superior Court for recompense.
[MacGinnis] and Hudson became lovers . . . [in] 1983, [and by late that year] they were living together in Hudson's Beverly Hills mansion.
When Hudson began losing weight and looking ill, he told Christian, who was about 27 years his junior, that he was merely dieting; later, associates said he was anorexic.
Christian said he learned the true cause of his partner's increasing gauntness the way the rest of the world did -- from a 1985 television broadcast from Paris, where Hudson had flown to seek treatment for AIDS.
"I thought I was a dead man," Christian recalled thinking at the time.
He tested negative for the disease after several tests. Told by medical experts that the best treatment would cost $100,000 a year with a life expectancy of three years, he approached Hudson's managers after the actor's death and asked them to place $300,000 in a trust fund to cover his care if he developed AIDS, with the funds returning to the estate if he remained AIDS-free.
When the managers turned him down, "That's when he went to Marvin Mitchelson," the famous palimony attorney who filed the lawsuit against Hudson's estate, said Brent Beckwith, who was Christian's lover and best friend for nine years.
The pre-suit request for recompense was tailored to the injury MacGinnis suffered in a way no jury verdict could be. The promise to return the money to Hudson's estate if MacGinnis did not fall ill as he worried he would was particularly generous -- MacGinnis did not ask for anything other than the anticipated cost of his medical care -- and then only if he actually needed it. At this point, we might be asking ourselves how much litigation is undertaken because we do not have universal medical care. Would MacGinnis have brought suit in any event? We'll never know. It appears, however, that he was initially willing to seek only "make whole" recompense rather than reaching for the litigation brass ring.
Twelve Los Angeles Superior Court jurors thought MacGinnis' injury was far greater than the medical expense settlement originally offered -- to the tune of $21.75 million, which was reduced by the Court and affirmed on appeal at $5.5 million.
The settlement pending a request for Supreme Court review was reportedly "less than $6 million."
At Thanksgiving dinner, a physician opined that there could be no health care reform in the absence of tort reform. Taking my own Thanksgiving dinner table conversation advice, I nodded my head knowingly and took another helping of mashed potatoes. I've since wondered whether the doctor hadn't gotten it backwards. There could be no real malpractice tort reform in the absence of health care reform.
Thoughts?
Comments (5)
Read through and enter the discussion by using the form at the endDebra Healy - December 5, 2009 8:32 PM
Hi, Victoria -
Thanks for raising this topic. Just yesterday I commented on an article in the "Providence Journal" regarding actor James Woods settling with Kent Hospital in Rhode Island over the death of Woods' brother. Woods indicated that the turning point in the case came after the hospital Chief Executive met with the Woods family and apologized for the first time. The hospital has agreed to invest $1.25 million over the next five years to redesign the care process by promoting patient safety and developing new ways to reduce the risk of human errors and improve outcomes.
I completely agree with your statement “There [can] be no real malpractice tort reform in the absence of health care reform.” Tort reform focuses on dollars. The focus must, instead, be on patient care. Health care reform must shift the focus back from dollars to patient care.
Picture trying to repair a leaky roof with dollar bills. Tort reform is like acknowledging that the “fix” of stuffing dollars isn’t working, but merely asserts that we stop stuffing dollars without ever addressing the cause of the leak.
The reaction of Woods’ family reflects what is important when things go wrong in patient care: the needs of the patient, the need to improve procedures and outcomes by reducing the risk of error, and the basic human need for an apology.
Take care.
Debra
Jeff Gordon - December 6, 2009 10:26 AM
V: This is a fascinating conversation - and one that my father (a doctor) and me (the lawyer) decided to have over dinner one night.
As you might imagine, my dad's perspective was that tort reform was THE immediate requirement to solving the problem of out-of-control medical costs. He agreed that there were other issues, but this, far and away, was the most pressing and important.
After two hours of discussion (I'll spare everyone the play-by-play recap), we didn't end anywhere other than where we started... and I was left realizing that health care reform, tort reform, and about thirty other issues are all intricately tied together. "Fixing" one of them in a bubble - or even BEFORE the others is probably not going to work the way as planned.
Rather, I believe that we need to review the entire system and propose a set of changes to all of the various moving parts and reboot the system entirely. Put another way, if there are thirty plus variables in an equation, changing only one at a time is never going to solve the equation. You have to deal with the entire equation as a unit.
This flies in the face of logic as we learned it as children. Playing the game Mastermind (http://mastermindboardgame.com/content/editions/2422.1.1.1?pc=fs25&gclid=CO-s5b6Owp4CFRSdnAod8A_TpQ), you were taught that through systematically changing a single variable, you could eventually brute-force the puzzle. But this only works when there are an absolute-known number of variables... and an absolute-known number of options for each variable. You have a fixed number of combinations.
With our current healthcare issues, I'm only guessing that there are 30 variables. There could be more. And I KNOW that I have no idea as to ALL of the potential options for each variable (as your article shows, there are some really creative solutions). So changing one at a time is going to be a slow-boat to nowhere.
Vickie - December 6, 2009 11:26 AM
Thanks for your thoughts, Jeff and Debra, and for your willingness to have this conversation across the doctor-lawyer divide Jeff, with your dad no less! I think part of the reasons tort reform looms so large in the mind of physicians (and this is somewhat educated guess-work; I'm certainly willing to be demonstrated wrong): (1) their insurance carriers have become so risk averse that they've imposed layer after layer of burdensome loss prevention requirements on their doctors; (2) the fear of malpractice "makes" doctors alter their practices in self-protection against this unseen but ever lurking monster; and, (3) their insurance premiums continue to be sky high despite the fact that in California, at least, the malpractice bar is diminishing to a vanishing point because the $250,000 cap on non-economic damages has devalued the "price" of harm caused by malpractice for all injuries, not just the catastrophic ones. I also understand that physicians real income has decreased and that it is routinely blamed on the boogey-man of malpractice.
Most lawyers are not, by the way, so malpractice averse despite the size of their insurance premiums because we know how unlikely it is we'll be sued and because (I believe) we also know that client-relations is a better hedge against potential malpractice than insurance coverage (though of course we HAVE insurance coverage). Also, our carriers impose no requirements on us that are difficult to bear - have a good system for keeping track of due dates is the only requirement I recall from the days I was practicing law instead of mediation and arbitration (these premiums ridiculously low because no one has found a good way to sue us yet -- but as I keep saying -- our day is coming too).
Who continues to make stratospheric profits? The industry that thrives on fear - the industry to which I owe at least half the income I earned during my career as a lawyer - the insurance industry.
Jeff Gordon - December 7, 2009 4:13 PM
I agree on many points regarding the truth that insurance companies are making out like bandits on much of this.
But I believe it's more complex than that. This is why I think it's a problem that requires a full reboot of the system... after changing things in tort law, reimbursement codes, insurance regs, gov't oversight, and dozens of other areas.
My dad says (and I have no reason to doubt him), that he's been sued multiple times for actually CATCHING/SOLVING the problem the patient arrived with. I don't know what the cause of action is alleged to be. But, what I do know is that these suits are all apparently settled - the insurance industry doesn't want/need to try the cases... they simply pay out and then force the docs to pay more (isn't subrogation a grand idea?).
So I can see how the Dr's are pissed at insurance companies that are already boxing them in on their ability to practice, and then charging them to both come AND go.
[Side note: He's happy practicing now... for the VA. No malpractice b/c the patients can't sue. He can do whatever treatment he knows will work and doesn't have to fear some computer program telling him that he's stepped out of bounds.]
Cynthia (Cyndi) Clauder - November 20, 2010 3:47 AM
I was very good friends with Marc C. MacGinnis since we were 15/16 years old back in 1970. We were in the Villa Park High School Marching Spartans and the Concert Band together, were "Swing/Ballroom" dancing partners for years, and even had our own little musical rock group for a while. We stayed in touch for many years after high school, in fact I attended his 20th high school reunion with him in 1991. I only just found out about his death this evening while I was trying to track him down, since we had lost touch in the past few years. Because his 40th reunion is coming up next year I wanted to find out if I would be fortunate enough to be able to accompany him again. However I was stunned and deeply saddened to discover via the Internet that my dear friend had died. Now at least I understand why I have been unable to reach him through the phone numbers I had, and why none of my messages were returned.
For the record, I wish to express that the Marc I knew did not misrepresent himself in his efforts at desiring money for possible medical care. He was a good & ethical man who lived with high principles. He was a very kind friend to me and particularly there for me in times when I needed a friend to help me recover from serious tragedies in my life. That is the type of friend Marc was, very loyal to those who were the same with him, and there are other people who know this. He even abided by the legal agreement and never told me what his settlement was. Many others would have bragged about it, especially if they had sued just for the money or revenge, etc.
I will always cherish the good times we had going dancing at Disneyland to the music of Les Brown and His Band of Renown. We would have so much fun and danced so well that the older dancers would clear the floor to watch us, remembering a time when they were young and could "swing" as well as we did together. And even Les Brown looked forward to seeing us whenever he played there at the Carnation outdoor dance floor. Back then it only cost us about $4.00 each to get into Disneyland after 6 or 7 pm. which was a very good thing...those were the days, right! LOL
I am so thankful to have had Marc as a great friend and will cherish my memories of him and our fun times forever. I only wish I could have sent something to have let his sister and other relatives and friends know how very much he meant to me.
From one of his best friends & former classmates,
Cyndi Clauder