Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

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

The mistakes made by an attorney constitutes legal malpractice. To prove legal malpractice, an aggrieved party must show obligation, breach, causation and damage. Let's review each of these aspects.

Duty

Doctors and medical professionals take an oath that they will use their knowledge and expertise to treat patients, not to cause further harm. A patient's legal right to compensation for injuries sustained due to medical malpractice is based on the concept of the duty of care. Your attorney can determine if your doctor's actions violated the duty to care and if the breach resulted in injury or illness.

To prove a duty to care, your lawyer needs to establish that a medical professional had a legal relationship with you in which they had a fiduciary obligation to act with an acceptable level of competence and care. This relationship can be established through eyewitness testimony, doctor-patient records and expert testimony of doctors with similar education, experience, and training.

Your lawyer will also have to demonstrate that the medical professional violated their duty of caring by failing to adhere to the accepted standards of their area of expertise. This is often referred to as negligence, and your attorney will evaluate the defendant's conduct with what a reasonable person would perform in the same situation.

Your lawyer must also show that the breach of the defendant's duty led directly to your injury or loss. This is referred to as causation, and your lawyer will make use of evidence like your medical records, witness statements and expert testimony to demonstrate that the defendant's inability to meet the standards 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 is in line with professional medical standards. If a physician fails to adhere to these standards and fails to do so results in injury, then negligence and medical malpractice might occur. Expert witness testimony from medical professionals that have similar training, certificates or experience can help determine the standard of care in any given situation. State and federal laws as well as institute policies can also be used to determine what doctors are required to perform for specific types of patients.

To prevail in a malpractice lawsuit the evidence must prove that the doctor did not fulfill his or her duty to care and that the breach was a direct reason for an injury. This is referred to in legal terms as the causation component and it is imperative to prove it. For instance in the event that a damaged arm requires an xray the doctor must properly set the arm and then place it in a cast to ensure proper healing. If the physician failed to complete the procedure and the patient was left with an irreparable loss of use of that arm, then malpractice may have occurred.

Causation

Legal malpractice claims are founded on the evidence that the attorney committed errors that resulted in financial losses to the client. For instance the lawyer does not file a lawsuit within the prescribed time of limitations, resulting in the case being lost for ever and the victim can bring legal malpractice actions.

However, it's important to realize that not all errors made by attorneys are illegal. Strategy and planning errors are not always considered to be misconduct. Attorneys have a wide range of discretion to make decisions, as long as they're rational.

The law also allows attorneys ample discretion to refrain from performing discovery on behalf of a client as long as the failure was not unreasonable or negligence. The failure to discover crucial information or documents like medical reports or witness statements or medical reports, could be an instance of legal malpractice. Other instances of malpractice could be a inability to include certain claims or defendants such as failing to make a survival claim in a wrongful death case or the continual and extended inability to communicate with a client.

It's also important to note that it has to be proven that if it weren't the negligence of the lawyer, the plaintiff would have won the underlying case. If not, the plaintiff's claims for malpractice will be denied. This makes bringing legal ansonia malpractice lawsuit claims difficult. This is why it's crucial to hire an experienced attorney to represent you.

Damages

To win a legal malpractice suit, the plaintiff must show actual financial losses resulting from an attorney's actions. In a lawsuit, this has to be proved with evidence, such as expert testimony and correspondence between the attorney and the client. The plaintiff must also show that a reasonable attorney could have prevented the harm caused by the negligence of the lawyer. This is known as proximate cause.

The act of malpractice can be triggered in a variety of different ways. Some of the most common errors include: not meeting the deadline or statute of limitations; not conducting an investigation into a conflict in a case; applying the law incorrectly to a client's particular situation; and breaking an obligation of fiduciary (i.e. mixing trust funds with personal attorney accounts) and mishandling a case, and not communicating with the client.

In most medical malpractice cases, the plaintiff will seek compensatory damages. These compensate the victim for the out-of-pocket expenses and losses, including hospital and medical bills, costs of equipment that aids in recovering, and lost wages. Victims may also claim non-economic damages like discomfort and pain as well as loss of enjoyment from their lives, and emotional distress.

Legal malpractice cases usually involve claims for compensatory as well as punitive damages. The former is intended to compensate the victim for the losses caused by the attorney's negligence while the latter is meant to discourage any future malpractice on the part of the defendant.