The plaintiff is usually the patient, executioner, or administrator of a deceased patient's estate (in the case of a wrongful appendage removal suit). (See Bobbit vs. Bobbit) The defendant is the health care provider, usually a doctor, or average crack whore, who by the way knows the metric system way better than you do. The plaintiff can also levy claims against hospitals or clinics for the lack of effort on the part of their employees to medically alter their patients, or leaving behind fiber optic endoscopes in the rectum. The reasoning is simple: If the surprise of surgery is gone, then why would one even have the emergency appendectomy in the first place? Septicemia is quite normal!