Legal malpractice suit because of a secretary's psychotic episode?

[vanaken25]

Hi. One of my friends is an attorney and faces bankruptcy because of one of his secretaries. She failed to write up and transmit hyperimportant documents as she might have been through a psychotic episode at that time.
She told my friend only much later what had happened as she only remembered it then, she says. She was fired thereafter but only noticed much later that she might have had said psychotic episode. My friend knew she had some psychological problems (non-psychotic) but not to the point where she would be capable to do this.
Could this be cited in court? Would it make any difference? I think it's really bad that, if one employee really screws up, that the attorney in question should face all the damage (going into millions). Is law really that unfair? Can anything be done, do you reckon?
Thanks a lot for all your responses and Have a really good day.

[elton]

Hi. One of my friends is an attorney and faces bankruptcy because of one of his secretaries. She failed to write up and transmit hyperimportant documents as she might have been through a psychotic episode at that time.
She told my friend only much later what had happened as she only remembered it then, she says. She was fired thereafter but only noticed much later that she might have had said psychotic episode. My friend knew she had some psychological problems (non-psychotic) but not to the point where she would be capable to do this.
Could this be cited in court? Would it make any difference? I think it's really bad that, if one employee really screws up, that the attorney in question should face all the damage (going into millions). Is law really that unfair? Can anything be done, do you reckon?
Thanks a lot for all your responses and Have a really good day.

Businesses have public and practice liability insurance,
Many countries demand it as a legal requirement.

As an employer, you become responsible for all the actions of your business.
including ensuring that actions take place when they should.,
Your own internal polices and procedures should ensure there are checks and balences in place that will catch failures or pick up work if say someone suddenly fell ill and could not complete their work.

- where was the supervision of the work
- where was the checklist/record of each step of the process taking place (and when)
- where was the check of the checklist and its completion/chasing of completion deadlines

yep, I would be looking at liability if I could not show that I had reasonable business practices in place to ensure timely progress and completion of work (no matter how much you might trust your employees).

if you have work that leaves you exposed for costs of non-completion, then you should be taking extra care over that work. No ?

If you admitted that you were in anyway aware of potential risk, and took no steps to limit that, expect that not to go in your favour. That said, standard good internal practices should have been enough for anyone to do the tasks required and the quality of work verfied.