Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys hold a fiduciary relationship with their clients and are expected to act with care, diligence and competence. Attorneys make mistakes, as do other professional.

The mistakes made by an attorney can be considered legal malpractice. To prove negligence in a legal sense the person who was hurt must prove duty, breach of duty, causation, and damage. Let's review each of these aspects.

Duty

Medical professionals and doctors take the oath of using their skill and training to treat patients and not cause additional harm. Duty of care is the basis for the right of patients to receive compensation when they suffer injuries due to medical negligence. Your attorney will determine if the actions of your doctor violated the duty of care and if these breaches resulted in your injury or illness.

To prove a duty of care, your lawyer must to show that a medical professional has an legal relationship with you in which they had a fiduciary obligation to act with reasonable skill and care. The proof of this relationship could require evidence like the records of your doctor and patient or eyewitness testimony, as well as expert testimony from doctors who have similar knowledge, experience, and education.

Your lawyer will also have to prove that the medical professional violated their duty of care by failing to adhere to the accepted standards of their area of expertise. This is usually called negligence. Your lawyer will be able to compare the actions of the defendant to what a reasonable individual would do in the same situation.

Your lawyer must also prove that the breach by the defendant directly caused your loss or injury. This is known as causation. Your lawyer will make use of evidence like your doctor or patient documents, witness testimony and expert testimony, to show that the defendant's failure meet the standard of care was the sole cause of the injury or loss to you.

Breach

A doctor is obligated to patients to perform duties of care that conform to the standards of medical professional practice. If a doctor doesn't meet those standards, and the result is an injury and/or medical malpractice, then negligence may occur. Expert evidence from medical professionals who have similar training, certifications and skills can help determine the appropriate level of care in a given situation. State and federal laws as well as institute policies also help determine what doctors are required to provide for specific kinds of patients.

To prevail in a malpractice case, it must be shown that the doctor violated his or her duty of care and that this breach was a direct cause of an injury. In legal terms, this is known as the causation component, and it is essential to establish. If a doctor has to perform an x-ray on a broken arm, they must put the arm in a cast and properly place it. If the physician failed to perform this task and the patient was left with permanent loss of use of that arm, then malpractice may have occurred.

Causation

Attorney malpractice claims rely on evidence that shows the attorney's mistakes resulted in financial losses for the client. For example when a lawyer does not file a lawsuit within the prescribed time of limitations, resulting in the case being lost for ever and the victim could bring legal malpractice lawsuits.

However, it's crucial to be aware that not all mistakes made by lawyers are a sign of wrong. Planning and strategy errors aren't usually considered to be a sign of negligence. Attorneys have a wide range of discretion to make decisions, as long as they're rational.

Likewise, the law gives attorneys a lot of discretion to conduct a discovery process on a client's behalf, as long as it was not unreasonable or negligent. The failure to discover crucial documents or facts, such as medical reports or statements of witnesses could be a sign of legal malpractice. Other examples of malpractice are the inability to add certain defendants or claims, for instance forgetting a survival count for an unjustly-dead case or the inability to communicate with clients.

It's also important that it has to be proven that, if not the lawyer's negligence, the plaintiff would have won the underlying case. Otherwise, the plaintiff's claim for malpractice will be rejected. This requirement makes the process of bringing legal malpractice lawsuits difficult. This is why it's important to find an experienced attorney to represent you.

Damages

A plaintiff must demonstrate that the lawyer's actions led to actual financial losses in order to prevail in a legal malpractice suit. In a lawsuit, this has to be demonstrated using evidence, like expert testimony or correspondence between the client and attorney. In addition the plaintiff must demonstrate that a reasonable lawyer could have avoided the harm that was caused by the negligence of the attorney. This is referred to as proximate causation.

The definition of malpractice can be found in a variety of ways. The most frequent kinds of malpractice are failing to meet a deadline, such as a statute of limitations, failing to conduct a conflict-check or other due diligence on the case, not applying the law to the client's situation or breaching a fiduciary obligation (i.e. Commingling funds from a trust account with an attorney's account as well as failing to communicate with the client are just a few examples of misconduct.

In the majority of medical malpractice cases, the plaintiff will seek compensatory damages. They compensate the victim for the expenses out of pocket and Malpractice Lawsuits losses, such as hospital and medical bills, costs of equipment needed to aid in recovery, and lost wages. Victims may also claim non-economic damages such as pain and discomfort or loss of enjoyment in their lives, as well as emotional stress.

In many legal malpractice cases, there are lawsuits for Malpractice Lawsuits punitive as well as compensatory damages. The former compensates victims for losses caused by the negligence of the attorney, whereas the latter is intended to deter future malpractice by the defendant.