Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

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

Some mistakes made by lawyers are legal malpractice. To establish legal malpractice, the aggrieved party has to prove that there was breach of duty, causation, breach and damages. Let's look at each one of these aspects.

Duty

Doctors and other medical professionals swear to use their education and experience to help patients and not to cause further harm. The duty of care is the foundation for the right of a patient to be compensated in the event of injury due to medical negligence. Your attorney will determine if your doctor's actions breached the duty of medical care and whether these violations resulted in your injury or illness.

Your lawyer must prove that the medical professional you hired owed a fiduciary duty to act with reasonable skill and care. The proof of this relationship could require evidence like the records of your doctor and patient or eyewitness evidence, or expert testimony from doctors who have similar qualifications, experience and education.

Your lawyer will also need to demonstrate that the medical professional breached their duty of caring by not adhering to the accepted standards in their field. This is often called negligence, and your attorney will compare the defendant's behavior with what a reasonable person would do in the same situation.

Your lawyer will also need to prove that the defendant's breach caused direct injury or loss. This is known as causation, and your lawyer will make use of evidence like your medical documents, witness statements, and expert testimony to prove that the defendant's inability to live up to the standard of care in your case was the direct cause of your loss or injury.

Breach

A doctor is obligated to patients to perform duties of care that adhere to professional standards in medical practice. If a physician fails to live up to those standards and the failure results in injury, negligence and medical malpractice might occur. Typically expert testimony from medical professionals with similar training, skills and experience, as well as certifications and certificates will aid in determining what the best standard of treatment should be in a specific situation. Federal and state laws and institute policies also help determine what doctors should provide for specific kinds of patients.

To win a malpractice case, it must be shown that the doctor breached his or duty of care and that the breach was a direct cause of an injury. In legal terms, this is referred to as the causation component, and it is crucial that it is established. For instance in the event that a damaged arm requires an xray, the doctor must set the arm and then place it in a cast to ensure proper healing. If the doctor is unable to complete this task and the patient is left with a permanent loss of use of the arm, malpractice may be at play.

Causation

Legal malpractice claims are founded on the evidence that a lawyer made mistakes that led to financial losses for the client. Legal malpractice claims can be filed by the injured party for example, if the lawyer fails to file the lawsuit within the statutes of limitations and the case being lost forever.

It is important to understand that not all mistakes by attorneys constitute malpractice. Strategies and planning mistakes aren't usually considered to be a sign of malpractice. Attorneys have a broad range of discretion to make decisions as long as they're reasonable.

Likewise, the law gives attorneys the right to perform discovery on the behalf of their clients, as long as it was not negligent or unreasonable. Legal malpractice is committed by failing to discover important documents or facts, like medical reports or witness statements. Other instances of malpractice include failure to add certain defendants or claims for example, like forgetting to make a survival claim in a wrongful death lawsuit or the continual and extended inability to communicate with the client.

It's also important that it must be established that but for the lawyer's negligence, the plaintiff would have won the underlying case. 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 crucial to hire an experienced attorney to represent you.

Damages

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

Malpractice can manifest in a number of different ways. The most frequent kinds of malpractice are failing to meet a deadline, such as a statute of limitation, failure to perform a conflict check or other due diligence of the case, not applying the law to a client's case and breaching a fiduciary responsibility (i.e. commingling trust account funds with an attorney's personal accounts) or mishandling a case, and not communicating with clients.

Medical malpractice lawsuits typically involve claims for compensation damages. These damages compensate the victim for out-of pocket expenses and expenses like medical and hospitals bills, the cost of equipment to aid in recovery and lost wages. Victims can also seek non-economic damages such as pain and discomfort or loss of enjoyment in their lives, as well as emotional distress.

Legal richfield malpractice attorney cases typically include claims for compensatory and punitive damages. The former is intended to compensate the victim for the losses caused by negligence on the part of the attorney while the latter is meant to deter future malpractice by the defendant's side.