Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys are bound by a fiduciary obligation to their clients, and they must behave with a degree of diligence, skill and care. Attorneys make mistakes, just like every other professional.

A mistake made by an attorney can be considered an act of malpractice. To prove negligence in a legal sense the aggrieved party must prove obligation, breach of obligation, causation, as well as damage. Let's look at each one of these aspects.

Duty

Doctors and other medical professionals swear to use their training and expertise to treat patients and not cause harm to others. The legal right of a patient to compensation for injuries sustained due to medical malpractice is based on the concept of duty of care. Your attorney can determine if your doctor's actions breached the duty of medical care and whether these violations caused you injury or illness.

To prove a duty of care, your lawyer must to demonstrate that a medical professional has an agreement with you that had a fiduciary obligation to perform their duties with an acceptable level of expertise and care. Establishing that this relationship existed could require evidence like the records of your doctor and patient, eyewitness statements and experts from doctors with similar experience, education and training.

Your lawyer will also need to prove that the medical professional breached their duty of care by failing to adhere to the accepted standards in their area of expertise. This is often referred to as negligence, and your attorney will evaluate the defendant's conduct to what a reasonable person would do in the same situation.

In addition, your lawyer must demonstrate that the defendant's breach of duty directly resulted in damage or loss to you. This is called causation. Your lawyer will rely on evidence like your medical or patient records, witness testimony, and expert testimony, to show that the defendant's failure to meet the standards of care was the sole cause of your injury or loss to you.

Breach

A doctor owes patients duties of care that are consistent with the highest standards of medical professionalism. If a doctor doesn't meet the standards, and the resulting failure causes an injury and/or medical malpractice, then negligence may occur. Expert witness testimony from medical professionals that possess similar qualifications, training and skills can help determine the appropriate level of care in any given situation. State and federal laws as well as institute policies also determine what doctors should perform for specific types of patients.

In order to win a malpractice claim it must be proved that the doctor acted in violation of his or her duty of take care of patients and that the breach was the primary cause of an injury. In legal terms, this is referred to as the causation factor and it is crucial that it is established. For example in the event that a damaged arm requires an x-ray the doctor must properly place the arm and put it in a cast for malpractice attorney proper healing. If the physician failed to perform this task and the patient was left with a permanent loss of use of the arm, then malpractice may have occurred.

Causation

Legal malpractice claims are based on the evidence that the attorney committed mistakes that resulted in financial losses for the client. For example when a lawyer fails to file an action within the timeframe of limitations, leading to the case being lost forever the person who was injured can bring legal malpractice actions.

However, it's important to understand that not all mistakes made by lawyers are a sign of illegal. Strategy and planning errors aren't usually considered to be a sign of negligence. Attorneys have a wide choice of discretion when it comes to making decisions, as long as they're able to make them in a reasonable manner.

The law also allows lawyers the right to refuse to conduct discovery for a client as long as the error was not unreasonable or negligence. Legal malpractice is committed through the failure to uncover important documents or evidence, such as medical reports or witness statements. Other examples of malpractice attorney are the inability to add certain defendants or claims, such as failing to include a survival count for a wrongful-death case or the recurrent failure to communicate with clients.

It is also important to remember that it must be proven that but the lawyer's negligence, the plaintiff would have won the underlying case. The plaintiff's claim of malpractice is deemed invalid if it's not proved. This is why it's difficult to file a legal malpractice claim. For this reason, it's essential to choose an experienced attorney to represent you.

Damages

To prevail in a legal malpractice lawsuit, the plaintiff must prove actual financial losses caused by the actions of the attorney. In a lawsuit, this must be demonstrated using evidence, such as expert testimony and correspondence between the client and attorney. In addition the plaintiff must show that a reasonable lawyer would have avoided the harm that was caused by the negligence of the attorney. This is known as proximate causation.

malpractice lawyer can occur in many different ways. The most frequent errors include: not meeting a deadline or statute of limitations; failing to perform an examination of a conflict on an instance; applying the law in a way that is not appropriate to the client's specific circumstances; and violating the fiduciary obligation (i.e. commingling trust account funds with an attorney's personal accounts) and mishandling the case, and not communicating with a client.

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

In a lot of legal malpractice cases there are cases for punitive and compensatory damages. The former is intended to compensate victims for losses caused by the negligence of the attorney while the latter is designed to discourage future malpractice attorney on the defendant's part.