Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys have a fiduciary obligation with their clients and are required to conduct themselves with diligence, care and skill. Attorneys make mistakes just like any other professional.

Every mistake made by an attorney is legal malpractice. To prove legal negligence the person who was hurt must prove the breach of duty, obligation, causation, and damage. Let's look at each one of these aspects.

Duty

Medical professionals and doctors swear to apply their education and expertise to treat patients and not to cause harm to others. Duty of care is the basis for a patient's right to compensation if they are injured by medical malpractice. Your lawyer can help determine if your doctor's actions breached this duty of care, and if those breaches caused injury or illness to you.

Your lawyer must prove that the medical professional was bound by the fiduciary obligation to act with reasonable skill and care. This relationship may be proven through eyewitness testimony, doctor-patient documents and expert testimony from doctors who have similar educational, experience and training.

Your lawyer will also have to establish that the medical professional violated their duty of caring by failing to adhere to the accepted standards in their field. This is often referred to as negligence. Your lawyer will examine the defendant's actions to what a reasonable person would perform in the same situation.

In addition, your lawyer must prove that the defendant's lapse of duty directly caused your loss or injury. This is known as causation. Your lawyer will rely on evidence like your medical or patient reports, witness testimony and expert testimony to prove that the defendant's failure to meet the standards of care was the primary reason for the loss or injury to you.

Breach

A doctor owes patients duties of care that adhere to professional medical standards. If a doctor fails live up to those standards and fails to do so results in injury, medical malpractice and negligence could occur. Expert witness testimony from medical professionals that possess similar qualifications, training or experience can help determine the level of care in any given situation. State and federal laws, along with guidelines from the institute, help define what doctors are expected to do for certain kinds of patients.

To be successful in a malpractice case it must be proved that the doctor did not fulfill his or her duty of care and that this violation was the primary cause of an injury. This is known in legal terms as the causation factor and it is imperative to establish. If a doctor needs to perform an x-ray on a broken arm, they have to put the arm in a cast and correctly place it. If the doctor did not do so and the patient suffered permanent loss of the use of the arm, then malpractice could have occurred.

Causation

Legal malpractice claims based on evidence that the attorney committed mistakes that led to 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 can bring legal malpractice actions.

However, it's important to recognize that not all errors made by lawyers constitute illegal. Errors involving strategy and malpractice lawsuits planning aren't usually considered to be a violation of the law and lawyers have lots of freedom to make decisions based on their judgments as long as they are reasonable.

In addition, the law allows attorneys a lot of discretion to conduct discovery on behalf of a client, so long as it was not unreasonable or negligent. Inability to find important information or documents, such as witness statements or medical reports could be a sign of legal malpractice. Other examples of malpractice include a failure to add certain defendants or claims such as failing to include a survival count in a case of wrongful death or the frequent and prolonged failure to communicate with a client.

It is also important to remember that it must be proven that, if not the negligence of the lawyer the plaintiff would have won the case. If not, the plaintiff's claims for malpractice will be denied. This requirement makes the process of bringing legal malpractice lawsuits difficult. It is essential to choose an experienced attorney.

Damages

A plaintiff must show that the lawyer's actions led to actual financial losses in order to prevail in a legal malpractice suit. This has to be demonstrated in a lawsuit with evidence like expert testimony, correspondence between client and attorney, billing records and other documentation. A plaintiff must also demonstrate that a reasonable attorney could have prevented the damage caused by the lawyer's negligence. This is known as the proximate cause.

It can happen in many different ways. The most frequent types of malpractice include failing to meet a deadline, including the statute of limitations, a failure to perform a conflict check or other due diligence of a case, improperly applying law to a client's situation or breaking a fiduciary duty (i.e. the commingling of funds from a trust account an attorney's own accounts or handling a case in a wrong manner, and not communicating with the client are all examples of malpractice.

Medical malpractice lawsuits typically involve claims for compensatory damages. These compensate the victim for the expenses out of pocket and losses, for example hospital and medical bills, the cost of equipment needed to aid in recovery, and lost wages. In addition, the victims can seek non-economic damages, such as pain and suffering or loss of enjoyment life, and emotional distress.

Legal malpractice cases typically involve claims for compensatory as well as punitive damages. The former compensates victims for malpractice lawsuits the loss resulting from the attorney's negligence, while the latter is designed to deter any future malpractice attorneys committed by the defendant.