Americans are uniquely litigious. There are reforms that could be made to the legal system that would fix this, but lawyers are financially incentivized to resist them.
lawyers
Just because something is documented in a medical chart doesn't make it more accurate. How it's conveyed, and in what context, greatly matters.
A California judge is going to determine whether or not coffee causes cancer. Think about that. We live in a society where judges and lawyers – not medical doctors or scientists – get to determine the credibility of biomedical research. And guess who paid in the process?
Lawyers are routinely required to solve problems that they themselves created. If something like this were to occur in any other area of life, it would be called racketeering. So beware, science: a lawsuit-happy nation turns its eyes to you.