Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys are required to fulfill a fiduciary responsibility to their clients and are required to act with diligence, skill and care. Attorneys make mistakes, just like any other professional.

The mistakes made by lawyers are legal malpractice lawyer. To prove negligence in a legal sense, the aggrieved must show obligation, breach of obligation, causation, and damages. Let's look at each of these elements.

Duty-Free

Doctors and other medical professionals swear to use their training and skills to cure patients and malpractice lawsuits not cause further harm. Duty of care is the basis for the right of a patient to be compensated if they are injured by medical negligence. Your attorney can determine if your doctor's actions breached the duty of medical care and whether these violations caused injury or illness.

Your lawyer must establish that the medical professional owed you the duty of a fiduciary to perform with reasonable competence and care. The proof of this relationship may require evidence such as the records of your doctor and patient or eyewitness testimony, as well as experts from doctors with similar experiences, education and training.

Your lawyer will also have to show that the medical professional violated their duty of caring by not adhering to the accepted standards in their field. This is usually known as negligence. Your lawyer will be able to compare the actions of the defendant to what a reasonable person would do in a similar situation.

Your lawyer must also show that the breach by the defendant directly contributed to your injury or loss. This is referred to as causation. Your attorney will rely on evidence such as your doctor-patient records, witness statements and expert testimony to show that the defendant's failure to uphold the standards of care in your case was the direct cause of your injury or loss.

Breach

A doctor is required to perform a duty of care for his patients that corresponds to professional medical standards. If a doctor doesn't meet the standards, and the resulting failure causes an injury, then medical malpractice or malpractice lawsuits negligence could occur. Typically expert testimony from medical professionals with similar training, skills or certifications will help determine what the standard of care should be in a particular case. State and federal laws as well as institute policies also help determine what doctors are required to perform for specific types of patients.

In order to win a malpractice claim it is necessary to prove that the doctor breached his or their duty of care, and that the breach was the direct cause of an injury. In legal terms, this is referred to as the causation component and it is crucial to establish. For example, if a broken arm requires an xray, the doctor has to properly set the arm and place it in a cast to ensure proper healing. If the doctor did not do so and the patient was left with an unavoidable loss of use of the arm, then malpractice may have occurred.

Causation

Attorney malpractice claims rely on evidence that demonstrates that the attorney's mistakes resulted in financial losses for the client. For example when a lawyer does not file an action within the timeframe of limitations, leading to the case being lost forever and the victim can bring legal malpractice actions.

It's important to recognize that not all mistakes by attorneys are malpractice. Mistakes in strategy and planning are not generally considered to be malpractice, and attorneys have plenty of discretion to make judgement calls so long as they are reasonable.

The law also allows attorneys an enormous amount of discretion to not conduct discovery on behalf of their clients in the event that the error was not unreasonable or a result of negligence. The failure to discover crucial information or documents, such as medical or witness statements or medical reports, could be an instance of legal malpractice. Other examples of malpractice include a failure to add certain claims or defendants for example, like forgetting to make a survival claim in a wrongful-death case, or the repeated and extended inability to communicate with clients.

It is also important to note the fact that the plaintiff must prove that, if not due to the lawyer's negligent behavior, they would have prevailed. The plaintiff's claim for malpractice will be dismissed when it isn't proven. This is why it's difficult to bring an action for legal malpractice. It is important to employ an experienced attorney.

Damages

To prevail in a legal malpractice lawsuit the plaintiff must show actual financial losses resulting from the actions of an attorney. This should be proved in a lawsuit using evidence like expert testimony, correspondence between client and attorney as well as billing records and other documents. In addition the plaintiff has to prove that a reasonable lawyer would have prevented the harm caused by the attorney's negligence. This is known as the proximate cause.

The act of malpractice can be triggered in a variety of different ways. The most frequent errors include: not meeting the deadline or statute of limitations; not performing the necessary conflict checks on a case; applying the law improperly to a client's specific circumstances; and violating an obligation of fiduciary (i.e. commingling trust account funds with an attorney's personal accounts) and mishandling an instance, and not communicating with a client.

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

Legal malpractice cases often involve claims for compensatory and punitive damages. The former compensates the victim for losses caused by the negligence of the attorney while the latter is designed to deter future malpractice by the defendant's side.