Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys have a fiduciary duty to their clients, and are required to act with a high degree of skill, diligence and care. But, as with all professionals, attorneys make mistakes.

There are many mistakes made by lawyers are a result of malpractice. To prove legal negligence the victim must demonstrate the breach of duty, obligation, causation, and damages. Let's take a look at each one of these aspects.

Duty-Free

Doctors and medical professionals take an oath that they will use their skills and experience to treat patients and not causing further harm. The legal right of a patient to compensation for injuries sustained from medical malpractice rests on the concept of duty of care. Your attorney can assist you determine whether or not the actions of your doctor violated this duty of care, and whether those breaches caused injury or illness to you.

Your lawyer must prove that the medical professional you hired owed a fiduciary duty to act with reasonable competence and care. This relationship may be proven by eyewitness testimony of witnesses, doctor-patient reports and expert testimony from doctors who have similar education, experience and training.

Your lawyer will also need to demonstrate that the medical professional breached their duty to care by failing to adhere to the accepted standards of their field. This is usually referred to by the term negligence. Your attorney will compare what the defendant did to what a reasonable person would do in the same situation.

Your lawyer must also prove that the breach by the defendant directly contributed to your injury or loss. This is called causation. Your lawyer will make use of evidence, such as your doctor/patient reports, witness testimony and expert testimony, to show that the defendant’s failure to comply with the standard of care was the main reason for the loss or injury to you.

Breach

A doctor is obligated to patients to perform duties of care that conform to the standards of medical professional practice. If a doctor does not meet these standards and fails to do so results in injury, then medical malpractice and negligence could occur. Typically the testimony of medical professionals who have the same training, qualifications or certifications will assist in determining what the minimum standard of medical care should be in a specific situation. State and federal laws as well as institute policies also help define what doctors must do for specific types of patients.

To prevail in a malpractice case it must be proven that the doctor breached his or her duty of care and that this breach was the direct cause of injury. This is known in legal terms as the causation element and it is imperative to establish. For instance an injured arm requires an x-ray, the doctor should properly set the arm and place it in a cast to ensure proper healing. If the physician failed to do so and the patient was left with an irreparable loss of use of that arm, then malpractice could have occurred.

Causation

Attorney hastings malpractice attorney claims are based on evidence that demonstrates that the attorney's errors caused financial losses to the client. Legal Lake forest park malpractice law firm claims can be filed by the victim if, for example, the lawyer fails to file the lawsuit within the prescribed time, which results in the case being forever lost.

It is crucial to be aware that not all mistakes made by attorneys constitute wrong. Strategy and planning errors are not typically considered to be malpractice. Attorneys have a broad choice of discretion when it comes to making decisions as long as they're rational.

Likewise, the law gives attorneys a lot of discretion to conduct a discovery process on the behalf of their clients, as long as the action was not unreasonable or negligent. Failing to discover important information or documents, such as medical reports or witness statements could be a sign of legal malibu malpractice lawsuit. Other instances of malpractice include the failure to include certain defendants or claims, for instance not noticing a survival count in wrongful death cases or the constant failure to communicate with clients.

It's also important that it has to be proven that, if not the negligence of the lawyer, the plaintiff would have won the case. If not, the plaintiff's claims for malpractice will be rejected. This makes it very difficult to file a legal malpractice claim. It is essential to choose an experienced attorney.

Damages

In order to prevail in a legal malpractice case, the plaintiff must show actual financial losses caused by the actions of an attorney. This must be shown in a lawsuit with evidence like expert testimony, correspondence between the client and attorney, billing records and other documentation. A plaintiff must also demonstrate that a reasonable lawyer could have prevented the damage caused by the negligence of the lawyer. This is referred to as the proximate cause.

Malpractice occurs in many ways. Some of the most common kinds of malpractice are the failure to meet a deadline, such as the statute of limitations, a failure to conduct a conflict-check or other due diligence on the case, not applying the law to a client's case and breaching a fiduciary responsibility (i.e. the commingling of trust account funds with an attorney's personal accounts), mishandling of the case, and not communicating with the client.

In most medical malpractice cases the plaintiff seeks compensatory damages. They are awarded to the victim in exchange for out-of-pocket expenses and losses, for example hospital and medical bills, costs of equipment needed to aid in recovering, and lost wages. Victims can also seek non-economic damages such as pain and discomfort and loss of enjoyment their lives, as well as emotional suffering.

In a lot of legal malpractice cases, there are claims for punitive and compensatory damages. The former compensates the victim for the losses caused by the negligence of the attorney while the latter is meant to discourage any future malpractice by the defendant's side.