A well-known Bloomington attorney disciplined by a state board that oversees lawyers said his mistake was not intentional.
The Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission earlier this year censured Jim Ginzky for knowingly violating a court order by sending a document to his expert witness in a medical malpractice case.
"I readily admit I violated the order, but it was wholly unintentional," said Ginzky.
Judge Rebecca Foley had earlier ruled the document was not admissible. Ginzky said it was an oversight.
“I'm the one who disclosed that I did it. If I was trying to get away with something, I would not have disclosed to the court that I sent those documents erroneously,” said Ginzky. “I don't think it merits discipline in any fashion.”
The censure goes on Ginzky's record, but does not otherwise penalize him. There are other more severe penalties available for the commission to impose when lawyers commit more serious infractions, including suspension of a law license for varying lengths of time and revocation of a law license. A censure is more significant than a reprimand.
“The judge said, well, once the court ordered that those documents be restricted, you should have segregated them at your office, which I did do. The problem is we scan an awful lot of the documents into the computer system now so that we can call them up on our desktop. I hadn't segregated that information in the digital copies,” said Ginzky.
Ginzky has had a decades-long career and has argued a case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
The document excluded from the case by the judge was one of several Ginzky sent to his witness during a quick stop in the office on a Friday after Thanksgiving as part of the preparation for the case. He also said the banned document containing information from a different court case that a cardiologist at then Advocate BroMenn Medical Center had been banned from practice at the hospital is publicly available.
"The reported decisions of the Fourth District Appellate Court in Springfield go through and detail most of that same information. So, it's available on the internet," said Ginzky.
The information was part of the hospital file it keeps on physicians as part of the Medical Studies Act. That law is intended to shield hospitals from disclosing peer reviews of decisions made by physicians. The shield is supposed to preserve the candor and honesty of the physicians during the review process. But Ginzky said over the years hospitals have widened the use of the exclusion.
“What the risk manager for the defendant institution does, or the defense counsel, is create a Medical Studies Act file and any incriminating evidence goes into the Medical Studies Act file, and they take the position that nobody can ever see it,” said Ginzky. “It is being used as a sword, as opposed to a shield.”
Ginzky said there could be a legislative effort to revise the law and return it to its original intent, but it would be an uphill battle.
“It's the lobbyists down in Springfield, or for that matter in Washington, D.C., who have the ears of the various legislators. The medical profession and the American Hospital Association are extremely well financed,” said Ginzky. “You're tilting at windmills, so to speak.”
The malpractice case is scheduled to go to trial in September in Bloomington. Ginzky had to find another expert witness.
