Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys hold a fiduciary relationship with their clients and are expected to conduct themselves with care, diligence and ability. Attorneys make mistakes just like any other professional.

Not all mistakes made by an attorney are considered to be malpractice law firms. To prove negligence in a legal sense, the aggrieved must show the breach of duty, obligation, causation, as well as damage. Let's look at each of these elements.

Duty

Medical professionals and doctors swear an oath to apply their expertise and knowledge to treat patients, and not causing further harm. The legal right of a patient to compensation for lawsuits injuries sustained from medical malpractice rests on the concept of the duty of care. Your attorney can determine if your doctor's actions breached the duty of medical care and if the breach caused you injury or illness.

To prove a duty to care, your lawyer will need to establish that a medical professional had an official relationship with you that had a fiduciary obligation to perform their duties with a reasonable level of competence and care. Proving that this relationship existed may require evidence, such as the records of your doctor-patient or eyewitness evidence, or expert testimony from doctors with similar qualifications, experience and education.

Your lawyer will also need to demonstrate that the medical professional violated their duty of caring in not adhering to the accepted standards in their field. This is often referred to as negligence. Your lawyer will examine the defendant's actions with what a reasonable person would do in the same situation.

Your lawyer must also demonstrate that the defendant's breach caused direct injury or loss. This is known as causation. Your attorney will use evidence like your doctor-patient records, witness statements and expert testimony to show that the defendant's failure to adhere to the standards of care in your case was the direct cause of your injury or loss.

Breach

A doctor has a duty to patients of care that are consistent with professional medical standards. If a doctor does not meet those standards and this causes injury, then medical malpractice or negligence could occur. Typically experts' testimony from medical professionals with similar training, skills and experience, as well as certifications and certificates will aid in determining what the best standard of medical care should be in a specific situation. State and federal laws, as well as institute policies, help determine what doctors are required to do for certain kinds of patients.

In order to win a malpractice claim it must be proven that the doctor violated his or their duty of care, and that the breach was a direct cause of an injury. In legal terms, this is referred to as the causation element and it is essential to establish. If a doctor has to take an x-ray of a broken arm, they must put the arm in a cast and then correctly place it. If the physician failed to do this and the patient was left with an unavoidable loss of function of that arm, then malpractice may have occurred.

Causation

Attorney malpractice claims are based on the evidence that proves that the lawyer's errors caused financial losses to the client. For instance when a lawyer fails to file a lawsuit within the statute of limitations, which results in the case being lost for ever and the victim could bring legal malpractice lawsuits.

It's important to know that not all mistakes by attorneys are malpractice. Strategy and planning errors are not always considered to be negligence. Attorneys have a wide range of discretion in making decisions so long as they're able to make them in a reasonable manner.

Additionally, the law grants attorneys the right to conduct discovery on the behalf of clients, so long as it was not unreasonable or negligent. Failure to uncover important documents or facts like medical reports or statements of witnesses, is a potential example of legal malpractice. Other instances of malpractice include the inability to add certain defendants or claims, like forgetting a survival count for wrongful death cases or the recurrent failure to communicate with clients.

It is also important to consider the fact that the plaintiff must prove that, if not for the lawyer's negligent conduct, they would have won their case. The plaintiff's claim for malpractice will be dismissed in the event that it is not proved. This requirement makes the process of bringing legal malpractice lawsuits difficult. For this reason, it's essential to choose an experienced attorney to represent you.

Damages

A plaintiff must demonstrate that the attorney's actions resulted in actual financial losses to win a legal malpractice lawsuit. In a lawsuit, this must be demonstrated using evidence, like expert testimony or correspondence between the attorney and client. In addition, the plaintiff must prove that a reasonable lawyer could have prevented the damage caused by the negligence of the attorney. This is known as proximate cause.

Malpractice can occur in many different ways. Some of the more common types of malpractice include failing to adhere to a deadline, which includes the statute of limitations, failing to conduct a conflict check or other due diligence of a case, improperly applying the law to the client's situation or breaking a fiduciary duty (i.e. commingling trust account funds with attorney's personal accounts) and mishandling the case, or not communicating with clients.

Medical malpractice lawsuits typically involve claims for compensatory damages. These compensate the victim for the out-of-pocket expenses and losses, including hospital and medical bills, the cost of equipment needed to aid in recovery, and lost wages. Additionally, victims may seek non-economic damages, such as suffering and suffering as well as loss of enjoyment life, and emotional stress.

In a lot of legal malpractice cases there are lawsuits for punitive as well as compensatory damages. The former compensates the victim for the losses caused by the attorney's negligence while the latter is meant to discourage any future malpractice lawyer on the defendant's part.