Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys have a fiduciary connection with their clients and are expected to behave with diligence, care and skill. However, just like any other professional, attorneys make mistakes.

The mistakes made by an attorney can be considered malpractice. To prove legal malpractice, an aggrieved person must demonstrate the breach of duty, duty, causation and damage. Let's look at each of these elements.

Duty

Medical professionals and doctors swear an oath to use their knowledge and expertise to cure patients, not to cause further harm. A patient's legal right to be compensated for injuries sustained from medical malpractice hinges on the concept of duty of care. Your lawyer can help determine if your doctor's actions violated the duty of care, and if those breaches caused injury or illness to you.

Your lawyer has to prove that the medical professional in question owed you an obligation of fiduciary to act with reasonable competence and care. Establishing that this relationship existed may require evidence such as your doctor-patient records, eyewitness statements and expert testimony from doctors with similar experiences, education and training.

Your lawyer will also need to prove that the medical professional violated their duty of caring by failing to adhere to the accepted standards in their area of expertise. This is often called negligence. Your lawyer will assess the conduct of the defendant to what a reasonable individual would perform in the same situation.

Your lawyer will also need to prove that the breach by the defendant directly caused your loss or injury. This is known as causation. Your lawyer will rely on evidence including your doctor's or patient documents, witness testimony and expert testimony, to demonstrate that the defendant's failure meet the standard of care was the main cause of injury or loss to you.

Breach

A doctor is bound by a duty of care to his patients which corresponds to professional medical standards. If a doctor fails meet those standards and fails to do so causes injury, then negligence and medical malpractice might occur. Typically expert testimony from medical professionals with similar qualifications, training, certifications and experience will help determine what the appropriate standard of medical care should be in a particular circumstance. State and federal laws and institute policies can also be used to determine what doctors are required to do for specific types of patients.

To win a malpractice case the case must be proved that the doctor violated his or their duty of care, and that this breach was the direct cause of an injury. In legal terms, this is referred to as the causation factor and it is crucial that it is established. If a doctor has to conduct an x-ray examination of a broken arm, they must put the arm in a cast and properly place it. If the doctor was unable to do this and the patient was left with an irreparable loss of use of that arm, then malpractice may have occurred.

Causation

Attorney malpractice claims are based on the evidence that proves that the lawyer's mistakes resulted in financial losses for Malpractice the client. For instance, if a lawyer does not file a lawsuit within the prescribed time of limitations, resulting in the case being lost forever the person who was injured can bring legal malpractice actions.

It is important to recognize that not all errors made by lawyers are a sign of malpractice. Strategies and mistakes do not typically constitute malpractice attorneys are given plenty of discretion to make judgement calls so long as they are reasonable.

The law also gives attorneys an enormous amount of discretion to not conduct discovery for a client provided that the failure was not unreasonable or negligent. The failure to discover crucial documents or facts like medical reports or witness statements could be a sign of legal malpractice. Other examples of malpractice include a failure to add certain claims or defendants for example, like forgetting to include a survival count in a wrongful death case or the consistent and persistent inability to contact a client.

It's also important to note that it must be proved that, had it not been the negligence of the lawyer, the plaintiff would have won the case. Otherwise, the plaintiff's claim for malpractice will be rejected. This requirement makes bringing legal malpractice claims difficult. For this reason, it's crucial to hire an experienced attorney to represent you.

Damages

To win a legal malpractice lawsuit a plaintiff must demonstrate actual financial losses caused by an attorney's actions. This can be proven in a lawsuit through evidence like expert testimony, correspondence between client and attorney along with billing records and other documentation. In addition, the plaintiff must prove that a reasonable lawyer could have avoided the harm that was caused by the attorney's negligence. This is referred to as proximate causation.

Malpractice can occur in many different ways. Some of the more common types of malpractice attorney include the failure to adhere to a deadline, which includes the statute of limitation, failure to conduct a check on conflicts or other due diligence of a case, improperly applying the law to the client's situation, breaching a fiduciary duty (i.e. merging funds from a trust account with the attorney's personal accounts or handling a case improperly and failing to communicate with the client are all examples of malpractice.

Medical malpractice suits typically involve claims for compensatory damages. They are awarded to the victim in exchange for expenses out of pocket and losses, including hospital and medical bills, costs of equipment needed to aid in recovery, and lost wages. Victims can also claim non-economic damages such as discomfort and pain or loss of enjoyment in their lives, as well as emotional anxiety.

Legal malpractice cases usually involve claims for compensatory as well as punitive damages. The former compensates the victim for the losses caused by the negligence of the attorney, whereas the latter is intended to deter future malpractice by the defendant.