Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys have a fiduciary responsibilities to their clients and they are expected act with skill, diligence and care. Attorneys make mistakes just like any other professional.

Every mistake made by an attorney constitutes legal malpractice. To prove negligence in a legal sense the aggrieved party must prove duty, breach of duty, causation, and damages. Let's examine each of these aspects.

Duty

Doctors and other medical professionals swear to apply their education and skills to cure patients and not to cause further harm. The legal right of a patient to receive compensation for injuries resulting from medical malpractice hinges on the notion of duty of care. Your attorney can help you determine whether or not your doctor's actions breached this duty of care, and whether these breaches resulted in injuries or illness to you.

Your lawyer must prove that the medical professional in question owed you the fiduciary obligation to act with reasonable competence and care. Proving that this relationship existed may require evidence, such as the records of your doctor-patient or eyewitness testimony, as well as experts from doctors with similar knowledge, experience, and education.

Your lawyer will also need to show that the medical professional violated their duty of caring by not adhering to the accepted standards in their area of expertise. This is often called negligence. Your lawyer will assess the conduct of the defendant with what a reasonable person would do in the same circumstance.

Your lawyer must also show that the defendant's negligence directly caused your loss or injury. This is referred to as causation. Your lawyer will rely on evidence like your doctor or patient reports, witness testimony and expert testimony, to demonstrate that the defendant's inability to meet the standard of care was the direct cause of the injury or loss to you.

Breach

A doctor is required to perform a duty of care to his patients that corresponds to professional medical standards. If a doctor fails live up to those standards and this causes injury, then medical malpractice and negligence may occur. Typically experts' testimony from medical professionals with similar training, skills, certifications and experience will aid in determining what the best standard of care should be in a particular case. Federal and state laws and institute policies also help determine what doctors should provide for specific kinds of patients.

To prevail in a malpractice lawsuit the case must be proved that the doctor violated his or their duty of care, and that this breach was a direct cause of an injury. This is known in legal terms as the causation element and it is vital to establish. For instance in the event that a damaged arm requires an x-ray, the doctor must place the arm and put it in a cast for proper healing. If the doctor did not do so and the patient was left with an irreparable loss of function of that arm, then malpractice could have occurred.

Causation

Attorney malpractice lawyers claims are based on evidence that demonstrates that the attorney's mistakes resulted in financial losses for the client. For instance, Malpractice lawsuit if a lawyer fails to file a lawsuit within the prescribed time of limitations, leading to the case being lost for ever the party who suffered damages could bring legal malpractice lawsuits.

It is crucial to realize that not all mistakes by attorneys are malpractice. Strategy and planning errors do not usually constitute malpractice. Attorneys have a broad range of discretion in making decisions as long as they're in the right place.

Additionally, the law grants attorneys the right to conduct a discovery process on behalf of a client, so long as the action was not unreasonable or negligent. Legal malpractice is committed by not obtaining crucial documents or evidence, such as medical reports or witness statements. Other instances of malpractice law firm could be a failure to add certain defendants or claims such as omitting to submit a survival count in a case of wrongful death or the frequent and persistent inability to communicate with a client.

It's also important that it must be proven that if it weren't for the lawyer's negligence, the plaintiff would have won the case. Otherwise, the plaintiff's claim for malpractice will be rejected. This requirement makes the process of bringing legal malpractice lawsuits difficult. Therefore, it's essential to choose an experienced attorney to represent you.

Damages

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

The act of malpractice can be triggered in a variety of different ways. The most frequent kinds of malpractice are: failing to meet a deadline, including the statute of limitations, failure to conduct a check on conflicts or other due diligence of a case, improperly applying the law to the client's situation, breaching a fiduciary duty (i.e. the commingling of trust account funds with attorney's personal accounts) or a mishandling of a case, and failing to communicate with clients.

In the majority of medical malpractice cases the plaintiff will seek compensatory damages. These compensations compensate the victim for out-of-pocket expenses as well as expenses such as hospital and medical bills, equipment costs to help recover and lost wages. Victims are also able to claim non-economic damages like pain and discomfort or loss of enjoyment in their lives, and emotional suffering.

In many legal malpractice cases there are lawsuits for punitive as well as compensatory damages. The former compensates a victim for the loss resulting from the attorney's negligence, while the latter is intended to discourage future malpractice by the defendant.