소위 ‘사과법’(apology law)의 검토와 제안

Examination of Apology Law and a Proposal of Its Alternative - Touching upon the Amendment Bill of the Patient Safety Act -

Recently, the introduction of the so-called apology law has been seriously considered to prevent apologies of medical doctors, etc. regarding medical malpractices from being used as evidence of fault in litigation. In accidents of personal injuries, mental suffering is known to be as great as physical harm, and to be alleviated by the perpetrator s apology. It is therefore necessary to deal with the perpetrator s apology as a matter of law rather than leaving it as a just ethical issue between the injurer and the victim. However, the introduction of the apology law needs to be cautious. It has not yet been proven whether its policy goal, i.e. the positive effect on the settlement of disputes can be achieved by the apology law, and it may cause undesirable ethical results. In addition, two more problems can be pointed out regarding the amendment bill to the Patient Safety Act which intends to introduce the apology law in Korea. The one is that it limits the application scope of the apology law only to the patient safety accidents, excluding other accidents causing personal injuries. The other is that it excludes apologies as evidence not only in civil proceedings, but also in administrative as well as criminal procedures. A better legal way of addressing the problem of the victim s mental suffering and apology is the use of the alimony system. It would be desirable to raise the standard for calculating alimony more than currently possible and to reduce it when injurer s apology is recognized as a genuine one that heals the victim s suffering from the objective point of view. This would be a way to minimize relative ethical adverse effects, while not overlooking the restorative function of apology.