Report of the trial of an action, Charles Lowell against John Faxon and Micajah Hawks, doctors of medicine, defendants : for malpractice in the capacity of physicians and surgeons : at the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine, holden at Machias for the county of Washington, June term, 1824, before the Hon. Nathan Weston, Jun., justice of the Court.

Charles Lowell; John Faxon; Micajah Hawks; Maine. Supreme Judicial Court

Portland [Me.] : Printed for James Adams, Jr., by David and Seth Paine, 1825

[Medical Malpractice: Early American Legal History] Front board detached. 124 p. Institutional stamps on title page. First edition of a medical malpractice pamphlet from Machias, Maine.  The plaintiff, Charles Lowell (1793-1858) was an Ellsworth, ME lawyer who was thrown from his horse.  Lowell was injured in the fall and he dislocated his left hip.  Due to poor medical treatment the injury progressed to paralysis on the left side of his body. "Lowell sued Faxon and Hawks for malpractice and asked for $10,000 in damages. In March 1823 a jury found Faxon and Hawks guilty of malpractice and awarded Lowell $1,962, an extraordinary sum in the early nineteenth century. The physicians appealed the case and won the opportunity for a retrial. The jury in the second trial could not decide on a verdict and passed the case to the trial judge, who awarded Lowell only $100. The defendants appealed this verdict too, which led to a third trial... The jury could not decide on a verdict, and Judge Weston convinced Lowell to drop the malpractice charge permanently. The volume of literature on this case far exceeded the literature published on any other suit in the century and underlines the rarity of the litigation in this period... The Lowell drama generated intense national interest and haunted the central characters for years. The series of trials reportedly cost Lowell $2,000 and left him in financial ruin. Dr. Hawks spent between $2,000 and $3,000 on his defense and labored for years to overcome his debt." (De Ville, Medical Malpractice in Nineteenth-Century America, pp. 13, 18-19). 

Shoemaker 21263.  Cohen, M.L. Bib. of Early American Law 11996.