I read with sadness about the illness that has befallen Michael Mone, the legal icon of medical malpractice, and the link of that illness to a misread MRI (“A trial he can’t win, but a case to be made,’’ Page A1, Feb. 18). Mone represented my father 40 years ago, after doctors at a well-regarded Boston teaching hospital failed to read a radiology report clearly indicating the presence of cancer. This failure led to unnecessary surgery that left my father paralyzed on one side of his face for the rest of his life and delayed by months chemotherapy for lymphoma, which eventually caused his death.

Mone treated my father with unfailing respect, honesty, and kindness. The settlement that eventually was obtained, though modest by today’s standards, assisted my parents to live in dignity and, more important, provided my father with a sense that his plight was recognized and might help others in the future.

It is a common trope of the right to rail against medical malpractice claims as a cause of higher health care costs, when the real culprit is negligence. Mone’s work has helped us to see this reality more clearly.

Marc D. Draisen

Roslindale