Maybe it’s just us, but we’ve always suspected that something might go wrong if you lay a person down and shine a ray of concentrated ultraviolet light directly into his eye. Sure enough, laser-eye-surgery malpractice actions have become a hot area of litigation. Since the introduction of laser eye surgery in 1995, the procedure has become wildly popular. More than a million LASIK (laser-assisted in situ keratomileusis) procedures were performed in 2000, and far more are expected in 2001.

Though most patients report no problems, some people claim their vision has been damaged—partially or severely—by the surgery. Doctors performing the procedure (which takes five to ten minutes and costs from $1,800 to $2,500 per eye) use a laser to correct nearsightedness, farsightedness or astigmatism by slicing a thin flap in the cornea, then sculpting and reshaping the cornea to provide sharper vision. Plaintiffs attorneys like Richard Robinson, a Buffalo, New York, lawyer who has reviewed some thirty LASIK cases and belongs to a nationwide LASIK attorneys’ group, say the number of calls from prospective litigants has risen sharply in the past year. Complaints include double vision, severe glare around objects, loss of night vision or depth perception, and full destruction of the cornea.

If early returns are any indication, juries appear willing to be sympathetic. In Pennsylvania last December, a woman was awarded $800,000 in a LASIK malpractice suit. LASIK surgery, she argued, overcorrected her vision, leaving her farsighted in her right eye. A subsequent corrective procedure, she said, left her with double vision. And a New York man won a $1.3 million verdict last April. He claimed that during his procedure, the laser sliced through his cornea, leaving his vision severely impaired.

Attorneys say the number of cases is rising partly because of high patient volume but also because the exceptional demand—and the lure of profits—is driving some clinics to employ undertrained doctors or technicians and to perform too many procedures too fast. Why the large verdicts? When a plaintiff has problems with something as precious as eyesight, lawyers say, jurors tend to be sympathetic.

It’s unclear how big a trend LASIK malpractice cases will ultimately become. Even plaintiffs lawyers concede that LASIK technology and training are likely to improve. They also point out that as procedures are developed to correct complications, jurors will be less inclined to award big payouts, discouraging future lawsuits.

For now, though, claimants are still coming forward, and no one knows how people who have had the surgery will fare ten or twenty years from now.

Our advice? Don’t bank on a LASIK litigation career just yet. But you may want to think twice before lying down for the laser.