Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

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

Not all mistakes made by an attorney are considered to be malpractice. To demonstrate legal malpractice, an aggrieved party must show duty, breach, causation and damage. Let's review each of these aspects.

Duty

Medical professionals and doctors take an oath to use their expertise and knowledge to treat patients and not cause additional harm. The duty of care is the basis for malpractice lawsuit the right of patients to receive compensation for malpractice lawsuit injuries caused by medical negligence. Your attorney can assist you determine whether or not the actions of your doctor violated this duty of care, and if those breaches caused injury or illness to you.

Your lawyer must demonstrate that the medical professional you hired owed an obligation of fiduciary to act with reasonable skill and care. This relationship may be proven by eyewitness testimony, physician-patient documents and expert testimony from doctors with similar education, experience, and training.

Your lawyer will also have to demonstrate that the medical professional breached their duty to care in not adhering to the accepted standards of their area of expertise. This is usually known as negligence. Your lawyer will be able to compare what the defendant did to what a reasonable individual would do in a similar situation.

Your lawyer must also demonstrate that the defendant's breach directly contributed to your loss or injury. This is referred to as causation. Your lawyer will make use of evidence like your medical records, witness statements and expert testimony to prove that the defendant's failure to uphold the standards of care in your case was a direct cause of your injury or loss.

Breach

A doctor has a duty of treatment to his patients that is in line with professional medical standards. If a physician fails to meet these standards and that failure results in injury, medical malpractice and negligence could occur. Expert witness testimony from medical professionals that have the same training, certifications and skills can help determine the level of care in a given situation. State and federal laws and institute policies also help determine what doctors are required to do for certain types of patients.

To prevail in a malpractice lawsuit it is necessary to prove that the doctor breached his or duty of care and that the breach was the direct cause of injury. This is referred to in legal terms as the causation element and it is vital to prove it. If a doctor is required to conduct an x-ray examination of a broken arm, they have to put the arm in a casting and correctly set it. If the doctor did not perform this task and the patient was left with an irreparable loss of use of the arm, then malpractice could have occurred.

Causation

Legal malpractice claims built on the basis of evidence that the attorney committed mistakes that caused financial losses to the client. For example the lawyer fails to file an action within the timeframe of limitations, which results in the case being lost for ever the person who was injured could bring legal malpractice lawsuits.

However, it's important to understand that not all mistakes made by lawyers are a sign of illegal. Mistakes in strategy and planning are not generally considered to be monongahela malpractice law firm and lawyers have lots of freedom to make decisions based on their judgments as long as they're reasonable.

The law also allows attorneys an enormous amount of discretion to not conduct discovery on behalf of clients provided that the reason for the delay was not unreasonable or negligence. Failing to discover important documents or facts like witness statements or medical reports can be a case of legal malpractice. Other examples of malpractice are a failure to add certain claims or defendants for example, like forgetting to submit a survival count in a wrongful death lawsuit, or the repeated and extended failure to contact the client.

It is also important to keep in mind the fact that the plaintiff needs to prove that, if not the lawyer's negligence, they would have won their case. The claim of the plaintiff for malpractice will be rejected if it is not proven. This requirement makes the process of bringing legal malpractice lawsuits difficult. Therefore, it's essential to choose an experienced attorney to represent you.

Damages

A plaintiff must show that the lawyer's actions led to actual financial losses in order to prevail in a legal malpractice suit. In the case of a lawsuit this has to be proved with evidence, such as expert testimony and correspondence between the attorney and client. In addition the plaintiff has to prove that a reasonable lawyer could have avoided the damage caused by the negligence of the attorney. This is referred to as the proximate cause.

The causes of malpractice lawsuit vary. Some of the most common mistakes are: failing to meet an expiration date or statute of limitations; failing to perform the necessary conflict checks on a case; applying the law incorrectly to a client's particular situation; and breaking the fiduciary duty (i.e. Commingling funds from a trust account with an attorney's account or handling a case improperly and not communicating with the client are all examples of malpractice.

Medical malpractice lawsuits typically include claims for compensation damages. These damages compensate the victim for expenses out of pocket and losses such as hospital and medical bills, costs of equipment to aid in recovery, and lost wages. Victims can also seek non-economic damages such as pain and discomfort, loss of enjoyment of their lives, and emotional distress.

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