Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

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

The mistakes made by an attorney is malpractice. To prove legal malpractice, an victim must prove that there was breach of duty, causation, breach and damage. Let's look at each of these elements.

Duty-Free

Doctors and other medical professionals swear to use their education and expertise to treat patients and not cause harm to others. A patient's legal right to be compensated for injuries sustained from medical malpractice hinges on the concept of the duty of care. Your attorney will determine if your doctor's actions breached the duty of care and if those breaches caused injury or illness.

To prove a duty of care, your lawyer has to prove that a medical professional had a legal relationship with you and were bound by a fiduciary duty to exercise an acceptable level of skill and care. This can be demonstrated by eyewitness testimony of witnesses, doctor-patient reports and expert testimony from doctors with similar educational, experience and training.

Your lawyer will also need to establish that the medical professional breached their duty of care by failing to follow the accepted standards of their area of expertise. This is often called negligence. Your attorney will examine the defendant's actions with what a reasonable person would do in the same situation.

Your lawyer will also need to prove that the breach by the defendant directly contributed to your injury or loss. This is referred to as causation, and your attorney will rely on evidence like your medical documents, witness statements, and expert testimony to demonstrate that the defendant's failure to adhere to the standards of care in your case was the direct cause of your injury or loss.

Breach

A doctor has a responsibility of care to his patients which is in line with professional medical standards. If a physician fails to live up to those standards and this results in injury, then negligence and medical malpractice might occur. Expert evidence from medical professionals who possess similar qualifications, training and skills can help determine the level of care in a given situation. Federal and state laws, as well as policies of the institute, help define what doctors are required to do for certain types of patients.

To win a malpractice case the case must be proved that the doctor violated his or attorneys his duty of care and that the breach was the direct cause of injury. In legal terms, this is known as the causation element and it is crucial that it is established. For instance when a broken arm requires an x-ray, the doctor must properly set the arm and place it in a cast to ensure proper healing. If the physician failed to perform this task and the patient was left with an unavoidable loss of use of the arm, then malpractice may have occurred.

Causation

Attorney malpractice claims are based on evidence that shows the attorney's errors resulted in financial losses for the client. For instance when a lawyer fails to file an action within the timeframe of limitations, leading to the case being lost forever, the injured party can bring legal malpractice actions.

It is important to understand that not all errors made by lawyers constitute malpractice. The mistakes that involve strategy and planning do not typically constitute malpractice attorneys are given a lot of latitude in making judgment calls so long as they are reasonable.

Additionally, the law grants attorneys the right to perform discovery on the behalf of clients, so long as it was not unreasonable or negligent. The failure to discover crucial information or documents like medical reports or witness statements, is a potential example of legal malpractice. Other examples of powell malpractice attorney include a inability to include certain claims or defendants such as failing to make a survival claim in a wrongful death lawsuit or the frequent and persistent failure to contact the client.

It's also important that it must be established that, had it not been for the lawyer's negligence, the plaintiff would have won the underlying case. Otherwise, the plaintiff's claim for malpractice will be denied. This makes bringing legal malpractice claims difficult. Therefore, it's important to choose a seasoned attorney to represent you.

Damages

In order to prevail in a legal malpractice lawsuit, plaintiffs must show financial losses incurred by the actions of an attorney. This has to be demonstrated in a lawsuit using evidence like expert testimony, correspondence between the client and attorney along with billing records and other documents. The plaintiff must also show that a reasonable attorney could have prevented the damage caused by the lawyer's negligence. This is known as proximate cause.

Malpractice can occur in many different ways. Some of the most common types of malpractice include the failure to meet a deadline, for example, a statute of limitations, failure to conduct a conflict-check or any other due diligence on the case, not applying the law to the client's situation and breaching a fiduciary responsibility (i.e. mixing funds from a trust account with an attorney's own accounts, mishandling a case 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 out-of-pocket expenses and losses, like 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 stress.

Legal malpractice cases often involve claims for compensatory and punitive damages. The former compensates victims for the loss resulting from the negligence of the attorney, whereas the latter is designed to deter future malpractice by the defendant.