You'd think it would be the defendant doctor who would want to avoid publicity in a medical malpractice suit, not the plaintiff and attorneys suing him.
But that's the case in the suit that plaintiff James Greco filed in Madison County Circuit Court against Dr. Bruce Vest of the Orthopedic & Sports Medicine Clinic in Alton.
Greco's attorneys, David Horan and Burton Newman, have asked Judge Andreas Matoesian to order both parties in the case not to contact or cooperate with the media or "act in a manner to instigate media coverage."
Horan and Newman complain that stories about the lawsuit published in local media have been "favorable to the defendants and negative to the plaintiffs.
"The published stories risk polluting the potential jury pool in Madison County and prevent the plaintiffs from obtaining a fair trial of this matter," they protest. "The merits of this case should be determined as prescribed by law -- by a jury -- unsullied by biased (and orchestrated) media reports."
Horan was not so reticent about publicity or fearful of polluted Madison County jury pools back in 2003 when he helped win a record $10 billion judgment against cigarette manufacturer Philip Morris.
But that was then and this is now.
James Greco's wife, Tamara Kay Greco, was employed as a legal secretary by Alton plaintiffs attorney Steve Selby. On April 29, 2004, she sprained her ankle. The next day, Tamara visited the Orthopedic & Sports Medicine Clinic for treatment. She died a week later from bilateral pulmonary thromboemboli.
James Greco alleges that the equalizer brace supplied by Dr. Vest caused or contributed to the blood clot that precipitated his wife's death.
Tamara Greco was 5'4" and 230 pounds at the time.
What is it about this six-year-old suit – a suit that James Greco filed two years after his wife's death, then subsequently dropped and years later refiled -- that won't bear public scrutiny?