Medical latrobe malpractice law firm Lawsuits

Attorneys have a fiduciary obligation with their clients and are expected to behave with diligence, care and competence. However, like all professionals attorneys make mistakes.

Not all errors made by attorneys are malpractice. To demonstrate legal malpractice, an victim must prove duty, breach, causation and damage. Let's take a look at each of these components.

Duty

Doctors and other medical professionals swear to use their training and skills to cure patients and not cause further harm. The duty of care is the basis for the right of a patient to be compensated if they are injured by medical negligence. Your attorney will determine if your doctor's actions violated the duty of care and if those breaches resulted in injury or illness.

To prove a duty to care, your lawyer needs to establish that a medical professional had an legal relationship with you, in which they have a fiduciary obligation to perform their duties with a reasonable level of competence and Lawyers care. This can be demonstrated by eyewitness testimony, physician-patient reports and expert testimony from doctors who have similar educational, experience and training.

Your lawyer will also need to establish that the medical professional breached their duty of caring by failing to adhere to the accepted standards in their field. This is often referred to as negligence. Your attorney will compare the defendant's behavior with what a reasonable person would do in the same situation.

Your lawyer must demonstrate that the defendant's breach of duty directly caused the loss or injury you suffered. This is known as causation, and your attorney will rely on evidence like your doctor-patient records, witness statements and expert testimony to prove that the defendant's failure to meet the standards of care in your case was a direct cause of your loss or injury.

Breach

A doctor is obligated to patients to perform duties of care that reflect the highest standards of medical professionalism. If a doctor fails to adhere to these standards and this results in injury, medical malpractice and negligence could occur. Typically, expert testimony from medical professionals who have similar training, expertise and certifications will help determine what the appropriate standard of medical care should be in a particular circumstance. State and federal laws as well as institute policies also determine what doctors are required to provide for specific kinds of patients.

To win a malpractice claim it must be established that the doctor acted in violation of his or her duty of care and that the violation was the primary cause of an injury. This is known in legal terms as the causation element and it is essential to establish. If a doctor has to conduct an x-ray examination of a broken arm, they must put the arm in a cast and properly set it. If the doctor fails to perform this, and the patient suffers a permanent loss in use of the arm, tupelo malpractice lawyer may have occurred.

Causation

Lawyer malpractice claims are built on the basis of evidence that the attorney made mistakes that caused financial losses for the client. For instance when a lawyer does not file a lawsuit within the statute of limitations, leading to the case being lost for ever the party who suffered damages may bring legal malpractice claims.

It is important to realize that not all errors made by attorneys are malpractice. Strategies and planning errors do not usually constitute malpractice. Attorneys have a broad decision-making discretion to make decisions so long as they're in the right place.

Likewise, the law gives attorneys the right to conduct a discovery process on behalf of a client, so provided that the decision was not unreasonable or negligent. Legal malpractice can be caused through the failure to uncover important documents or information, such as medical reports or witness statements. Other instances of malpractice include the inability to add certain defendants or claims, like the mistake of not remembering a survival number for an unjustly-dead case or the recurrent failure to communicate with clients.

It is also important to remember that it has to be proven that, had it not been for the lawyer's negligence, the plaintiff would have won the underlying case. The claim of the plaintiff for malpractice will be dismissed in the event that it is not proved. This requirement makes bringing legal malpractice claims difficult. It is essential to choose an experienced attorney.

Damages

A plaintiff must prove that the attorney's actions caused actual financial losses to win a legal malpractice suit. This should be proved in a lawsuit using evidence like expert testimony, correspondence between client and attorney along with billing records and other documents. A plaintiff must also demonstrate that a reasonable attorney would have prevented the harm caused by the negligence of the lawyer. This is known as the proximate cause.

It can happen in a variety of ways. Some of the most common types of malpractice include failing to meet a deadline, for example, the statute of limitations, a failure to perform a conflict check or other due diligence check on the case, not applying the law to the client's situation and breaching a fiduciary responsibility (i.e. the commingling of funds from a trust account with the attorney's own accounts or handling a case improperly and not communicating with the client are just a few examples of misconduct.

Medical malpractice lawsuits typically include claims for compensation damages. These compensate the victim for expenses out of pocket and losses, including hospital and medical bills, costs of equipment required to aid in recovering, and lost wages. Victims are also able to claim non-economic damages like discomfort and pain, loss of enjoyment of their lives, and emotional distress.

In a lot of legal malpractice cases there are claims for punitive and compensatory damages. The former compensates victims for losses resulting from the attorney's negligence, while the latter is designed to discourage future misconduct by the defendant.