Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys have a fiduciary responsibilities to their clients and they are expected act with a degree of diligence, skill and care. Attorneys make mistakes, as do other professional.

The mistakes made by an attorney can be considered malpractice. To prove legal malpractice, an aggrieved party must show duty, breach, causation and damages. Let's take a look at each of these elements.

Duty-Free

Medical professionals and doctors take the oath of using their expertise and knowledge to treat patients and not causing further harm. 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 violated the duty of care and whether these violations caused you injury or illness.

To establish a duty of care, your lawyer has to establish that a medical professional had an official relationship with you that had a fiduciary obligation to perform their duties with a reasonable level of skill and care. This relationship can be established by eyewitness testimony, 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 caring in not adhering to the accepted standards in their area of expertise. This is often referred to as negligence. Your lawyer will compare the defendant's behavior to what a reasonable person would do in the same situation.

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

Breach

A doctor is bound by a duty of care for his patients that reflects professional medical standards. If a doctor fails to adhere to these standards and the failure results in injury, then negligence and medical malpractice might occur. Typically expert testimony from medical professionals with similar qualifications, training, certifications and experience will aid in determining what the best standard of care should be in a particular situation. State and federal laws, along with guidelines from the institute, help define what doctors are required to do for certain kinds of patients.

To win a malpractice case it is necessary to prove that the doctor violated his or her duty of care and that this breach was a direct cause of an injury. This is referred to in legal terms as the causation element, and it is crucial that it be established. For instance an injured arm requires an x-ray the doctor must properly set the arm and malpractice place it in a cast to ensure proper healing. If the doctor was unable to perform this task and the patient suffered a permanent loss of function of that arm, then malpractice may have occurred.

Causation

Attorney malpractice claims are based on evidence that demonstrates that 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, which results in the case being lost forever and the victim can bring legal malpractice actions.

However, it's important to realize that not all errors made by attorneys constitute malpractice. Strategies and mistakes do not typically constitute malpractice attorneys have a lot of latitude to make judgement calls so long as they are reasonable.

Additionally, the law grants attorneys a lot of discretion to perform discovery on the behalf of clients, so long as the action was not negligent or unreasonable. The failure to discover crucial information or documents, such as medical reports or statements of witnesses, is a potential example of legal malpractice. Other examples of malpractice include a failure to add certain defendants or claims, such as forgetting to make a survival claim in a wrongful-death case or the consistent and extended inability to contact clients.

It is also important to remember that it must be proved that if it weren't for the lawyer's negligence, Malpractice the plaintiff would have won the case. In the event that it is not, the plaintiff's claim for malpractice will be rejected. This makes bringing legal malpractice claims difficult. It's crucial to hire an experienced attorney.

Damages

To win a legal malpractice suit, the plaintiff must show actual financial losses resulting from the actions of an attorney. This can be proven in a lawsuit through evidence such as expert testimony, correspondence between client and attorney or billing records, and other documents. In addition the plaintiff must demonstrate that a reasonable lawyer would have prevented the harm that was caused by the attorney's negligence. This is known as the proximate cause.

Malpractice can occur in many different ways. The most frequent types of malpractice include the failure to adhere to a deadline, which includes the statute of limitation, failure to perform a conflict check or other due diligence on the case, not applying law to a client's situation or breaking a fiduciary duty (i.e. mixing funds from a trust account the attorney's own accounts or handling a case in a wrong manner, and failing to communicate with the client are all examples of malpractice.

Medical malpractice lawsuits typically involve claims for compensatory damages. They compensate the victim for the out-of-pocket expenses and losses, for example medical and hospital bills, costs of equipment that aids in recovering, and lost wages. Victims may also claim non-economic damages such as pain and discomfort, loss of enjoyment of their lives, as well as emotional anxiety.

Legal malpractice cases typically involve claims for compensatory or punitive damages. The former compensates the victim for losses resulting from the negligence of the attorney, while the latter is intended to deter future malpractice by the defendant.