This judgment protects the doctors from unnecessary harassment in courts when they appear as witnesses in medicolegal cases. The supreme court has directed all the lower courts not to unnecessarily summon a doctor to give evidence, to give them preference in court and not to keep them waiting and avoid unnecessary harassment by way of adjournments or cross-examination.

This judgment can be used by doctors in courtrooms when they are summoned as witnesses, especially in medicolegal cases.

But at the same time, this judgment also casts a duty on all doctors, in private and government hospitals, to attend emergency patients. This duty has been described as ‘total, absolute and paramount.’