Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys have a fiduciary obligation with their clients and are required to act with diligence, care and expertise. However, like all professionals attorneys make mistakes.

Every mistake made by an attorney is legal malpractice. To prove negligence in a legal sense the person who was hurt must prove the duty, breach of obligation, causation, and damages. Let's take a look at each of these components.

Duty-Free

Medical professionals and doctors swear the oath of using their skills and experience to treat patients and 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 whether or not the actions of your doctor violated this duty of care, and if the breach caused injury or illness to you.

Your lawyer must establish that the medical professional was bound by an obligation of fiduciary to act with reasonable skill and care. Proving that this relationship existed may require evidence, such as your doctor-patient records or eyewitness evidence, or expert testimony from doctors with similar knowledge, experience, and malpractice lawsuit education.

Your lawyer will also have to demonstrate that the medical professional breached their duty to care by failing to adhere to the accepted standards in their field. This is often called negligence. Your attorney will compare the defendant's behavior to what a reasonable person would do in the same circumstance.

In addition, your lawyer must show that the defendant's breach of duty directly caused the loss or injury you suffered. This is known as causation. Your lawyer will make use of evidence such as your doctor-patient records, witness statements and expert testimony to demonstrate that the defendant's inability to uphold the standards of care in your case was the direct cause of your loss or injury.

Breach

A doctor has a duty to patients of care that conform to the highest standards of medical professionalism. If a doctor fails to meet these standards, and the failure results in an injury that is medically negligent, negligence may occur. Typically the testimony of medical professionals with similar qualifications, training, certifications and experience will help determine what the appropriate standard of medical care should be in a particular situation. Federal and state laws and institute policies also help determine what doctors are required to do for specific types of patients.

To prevail in a malpractice lawsuit it must be proven that the doctor breached 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 element and it is crucial to establish. If a physician has to take an x-ray of an injured arm, they must place the arm in a casting and correctly set it. If the doctor did not perform this task and the patient suffered a permanent loss of use of the arm, then malpractice may have occurred.

Causation

Attorney malpractice claims rely on evidence that shows the attorney's errors caused financial losses to the client. For instance when a lawyer does not file an action within the timeframe of limitations, resulting in the case being lost forever the person who was injured could bring legal malpractice lawsuits.

It is important to understand that not all errors made by lawyers are considered to be malpractice lawyer. Planning and strategy errors are not always considered to be malpractice. Attorneys have a wide decision-making discretion to make decisions as long as they're reasonable.

The law also gives attorneys ample discretion to refrain from performing discovery on behalf of their clients as long as the error was not unreasonable or negligence. Legal malpractice can be committed through the failure to uncover important documents or evidence, such as medical reports or witness statements. Other examples of malpractice are the failure to include certain defendants or claims, for instance failing to include a survival count for wrongful death cases or the recurrent failure to communicate with clients.

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

Damages

A plaintiff must show that the attorney's actions caused actual financial losses to win a legal malpractice lawsuit. This can be proven in a lawsuit by utilizing evidence like expert testimony, correspondence between the client and attorney, billing records and other records. The plaintiff must also show that a reasonable lawyer could have prevented the harm caused by the negligence of the lawyer. This is referred to as proximate causation.

Malpractice can manifest in a number of different ways. Some of the most common mistakes are: failing to meet the deadline or statute of limitations; failing to conduct a conflict check on an instance; applying the law incorrectly to a client's particular situation; and breaking a fiduciary obligation (i.e. mixing trust account funds with attorney's personal accounts) and mishandling an instance, and failing to communicate with clients.

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

In a lot of legal malpractice cases, there are lawsuits for punitive as well as compensatory damages. The former compensates victims for losses caused by negligence on the part of the attorney while the latter is designed to deter future malpractice by the defendant's side.