Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys have a fiduciary connection with their clients and are required to conduct themselves with diligence, care and skill. Attorneys make mistakes just like any other professional.

The mistakes made by attorneys are considered to be malpractice. To prove negligence in a legal sense the victim must demonstrate the duty, breach of duty, causation, and damages. Let's review each of these elements.

Duty

Doctors and medical professionals take the oath of using their knowledge and expertise to treat patients, and not cause additional harm. The legal right of a patient to receive compensation for injuries resulting from medical malpractice rests on the notion of duty of care. Your attorney will determine if your doctor's actions violated the duty of care and if those breaches caused injury or illness.

To prove a duty to care, your lawyer has to show that a medical professional has an agreement with you in which they were bound by a fiduciary duty to perform their duties with reasonable skill and care. This relationship may be proven through eyewitness testimony, doctor-patient documents and expert testimony from doctors with similar education, experience, and training.

Your lawyer will also have to demonstrate that the medical professional breached their duty of caring in not adhering to the accepted standards in their field. This is usually called negligence. Your lawyer will assess the actions of the defendant to what a reasonable individual would do in a similar situation.

Finally, your lawyer must demonstrate that the defendant's breach of duty directly led to damage or loss to you. This is known as causation. Your attorney will rely on evidence like your doctor-patient documents, witness statements, and expert testimony to demonstrate 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 malpractice lawsuits has a responsibility of care for his patients that reflects professional medical standards. If a doctor does not meet those standards and this results in injury, medical malpractice or negligence could occur. Typically, expert testimony from medical professionals who have the same training, qualifications or certifications will assist in determining what the minimum standard of treatment should be in a particular circumstance. State and federal laws, along with policies of the institute, help define what doctors are required to do for certain kinds of patients.

To win a malpractice claim, it must be proven that the doctor did not fulfill his or her duty to care and that the breach was the direct cause of an injury. This is referred to in legal terms as the causation element, and it is essential to prove it. For example an injured arm requires an x-ray the doctor has to properly fix the arm and place it in a cast to ensure proper healing. If the physician failed to complete the procedure and the patient was left with a permanent loss of use of the arm, then malpractice may have occurred.

Causation

Lawyer malpractice claims are based on the evidence that the lawyer made mistakes that led to financial losses for the client. For example when a lawyer fails to file an action within the timeframe of limitations, resulting in the case being lost forever and the victim could bring legal malpractice lawsuits.

It is crucial to be aware that not all mistakes made by attorneys are wrong. Strategies and malpractice lawsuits mistakes are not generally considered to be malpractice and lawyers have the ability in making judgment calls so long as they are reasonable.

The law also grants attorneys ample discretion to refrain from performing discovery for a client, so long as the failure was not unreasonable or a case of negligence. Legal malpractice is committed by not obtaining crucial documents or facts, such as medical reports or witness statements. Other instances of malpractice include the inability to add certain defendants or claims, such as not noticing a survival count in a wrongful-death case, or the repeated failure to communicate with clients.

It is also important to consider the fact that the plaintiff needs to demonstrate that, if it weren't for the lawyer's careless conduct, they would have prevailed. If not, the plaintiff's claims for malpractice will be rejected. This makes the process of bringing legal malpractice lawsuits difficult. This is why it's important to find an experienced attorney to represent you.

Damages

To prevail in a legal malpractice suit, a plaintiff must demonstrate actual financial losses incurred by the actions of the attorney. In the case of 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 avoided the harm that was caused by the attorney's negligence. This is called proximate causation.

The act of malpractice can be triggered in a variety of different ways. The most frequent errors include: not meeting an expiration date or statute of limitations; failing to conduct an investigation into a conflict in an instance; applying the law incorrectly to a client's situation; or breaking an obligation of fiduciary (i.e. merging funds from a trust account with the attorney's personal accounts, mishandling a case and failing to communicate with the client are just a few examples of misconduct.

Medical malpractice suits typically involve claims for compensatory damages. They are awarded to the victim in exchange for out-of-pocket expenses and losses, such as hospital and medical bills, costs of equipment needed to aid in recovery, and lost wages. Additionally, victims may seek non-economic damages, like pain and suffering or loss of enjoyment life and emotional suffering.

In many legal malpractice law firms cases there are claims for punitive or compensatory 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.