Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys are in a fiduciary position with their clients and are required to act with diligence, care and skill. But, as with all professionals, attorneys make mistakes.

The mistakes made by an attorney can be considered malpractice. To prove that legal malpractice has occurred, the aggrieved person must demonstrate obligation, breach, causation and damage. Let's examine each of these aspects.

Duty-Free

Medical professionals and doctors take an oath to use their skill and training to treat patients and not cause additional harm. A patient's legal right to be compensated for injuries sustained from medical malpractice is based on the notion of the duty of care. Your lawyer can help determine if the actions of your doctor violated this duty of care, and whether these breaches caused injury or illness to you.

To establish a duty of care, your lawyer needs to establish that a medical professional has a legal relationship with you, in which they owed you a fiduciary responsibility to act with an acceptable level of expertise and care. To prove that the relationship existed, you may require evidence, such as your records of your doctor-patient relationship or eyewitness evidence, or experts from doctors with similar knowledge, experience, and education.

Your lawyer will also have to establish that the medical professional violated their duty of caring by failing to adhere to the accepted standards of their area of expertise. This is often referred to as negligence. Your lawyer will compare the defendant's behavior malpractice attorney to what a reasonable individual would do in the same situation.

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

Breach

A doctor is bound by a duty of care to his patients which corresponds to professional medical standards. If a doctor does not adhere to these standards and that failure results in injury, then medical malpractice and negligence could occur. Expert testimonials from medical professionals who possess similar qualifications, training or experience can help determine the quality of care in a given situation. Federal and state laws and institute policies also help define what doctors must do for specific types of patients.

To prevail in a malpractice lawsuit the case must be proved that the doctor violated his or her duty of care and that this breach was the direct cause of an injury. In legal terms, this is known as the causation element and it is essential that it is established. If a doctor needs to take an x-ray of a broken arm, they must put the arm in a cast and properly place it. If the doctor fails to do this and the patient loses their use of the arm, malpractice could have occurred.

Causation

Legal malpractice claims are founded on the evidence that a lawyer made mistakes that led to financial losses to the client. For example when a lawyer does not file an action within the timeframe of limitations, which results in the case being lost forever the party who suffered damages may bring legal malpractice claims.

However, it's important to understand that not all errors made by attorneys are wrong. The mistakes that involve strategy and planning are not generally considered to be malpractice attorney, and attorneys have lots of freedom to make decisions based on their judgments as long as they are reasonable.

In addition, the law allows attorneys a lot of discretion to perform discovery on the behalf of their clients, as provided that the decision was not negligent or unreasonable. Failing to discover important documents or facts like medical reports or witness statements could be a sign of legal Malpractice attorney. Other examples of malpractice are a failure to add certain claims or defendants such as failing to make a survival claim in a wrongful death lawsuit, or the repeated and long-running inability to contact the client.

It's also important to note that it has to be proven that, if not the lawyer's negligence, the plaintiff would have won the underlying case. If not, the plaintiff's claims for malpractice will be denied. This makes bringing legal malpractice claims difficult. It is essential to choose an experienced attorney.

Damages

In order to prevail in a legal malpractice lawsuit a plaintiff must demonstrate actual financial losses incurred by the actions of the attorney. In a lawsuit, this has to be proved with evidence, such as expert testimony and correspondence between the attorney and client. In addition the plaintiff must show that a reasonable lawyer would have prevented the harm that was caused by the negligence of the attorney. This is called proximate causation.

Malpractice occurs in many ways. Some of the most common mistakes are: failing to meet the deadline or statute of limitations; failing to conduct an examination of a conflict on an issue; applying the law incorrectly to a client's situation; or breaking the fiduciary obligation (i.e. mixing funds from a trust account with the attorney's personal accounts or handling a case improperly and failing to communicate with the client are all examples of malpractice.

In the majority of medical malpractice cases the plaintiff seeks compensatory damages. They are awarded to the victim in exchange for the out-of-pocket expenses and losses, including medical and hospital bills, the cost of equipment needed to aid in recovery, and lost wages. Victims may also claim non-economic damages, such as pain and discomfort as well as loss of enjoyment from their lives, as well as emotional anxiety.

Legal malpractice cases often include claims for compensatory and punitive damages. The first compensates the victim for losses caused by negligence on the part of the attorney while the latter is meant to prevent future mistakes on the part of the defendant.