Legal Dictionary of Pakistan

mala praxis

[Law Latin] Hist. Malpractice; unskilled treatment, esp. by a doctor. "Injuries, affecting a man's health, are where by any unwholesome practices of another a man sustains any apparent damage in his vigor or constitution. As by selling him bad provisions or wine or by the neglect or unskilful management of his physician, surgeon, or apothecary. For it hath been solemnly resolved that mala praxis is a great misdemeanor and offence at common law, whether it be for curiosity and experiment, or by neglect; because it breaks the trust which the party had placed in his physician, and tends to the patient's destruction." 3 William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 122 (1768).