Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys have a fiduciary obligation with their clients and are expected to act with diligence, care and skill. However, like all professionals attorneys make mistakes.

A mistake made by an attorney constitutes legal malpractice. To prove negligence in a legal sense the person who was hurt must prove the duty, breach of obligation, causation, as well as damages. Let's take a look at each one of these aspects.

Duty

Doctors and medical professionals take an oath to apply their skill and training to treat patients, not cause additional harm. A patient's legal right to compensation for injuries suffered from medical malpractice law firm is based on the notion of duty of care. Your attorney can determine if your doctor's actions breached the duty of medical care and if the breach caused injury or illness.

To prove a duty to care, your lawyer must to demonstrate that a medical professional had an agreement with you and have a fiduciary obligation to act with reasonable skill and care. This can be proved by eyewitness testimony, physician-patient records, and expert testimony of doctors who have similar educational, experience and training.

Your lawyer will also have to prove that the medical professional breached their duty of care by failing to adhere to the accepted standards of care in their area of expertise. This is often called negligence. Your lawyer will examine the defendant's actions with what a reasonable person would take in the same scenario.

Your lawyer must also demonstrate that the breach by the defendant caused direct injury or loss. This is known as causation. Your lawyer will use evidence like your medical or malpractice lawsuit patient records, witness testimony, and expert testimony, to show that the defendant's inability to comply with the standard of care was the main cause of your injury or loss to you.

Breach

A doctor is responsible for the duties of care that reflect professional standards in medical practice. If a doctor does not live up to those standards and fails to do so results in injury, medical malpractice or negligence could occur. Typically, expert testimony from medical professionals with similar training, skills and certifications will assist in determining what the minimum standard of treatment should be in a particular situation. Federal and state laws, along with guidelines from the institute, help determine what doctors are required to provide for specific types of patients.

To prevail in a malpractice lawsuit it must be proven that the doctor violated his or duty of care and that the breach was the direct cause of an injury. In legal terms, this is known as the causation element and it is vital to establish. For example when a broken arm requires an x-ray, the doctor must fix the arm and place it in a cast for proper healing. If the doctor did not perform this task and the patient suffered an unavoidable loss of the use of the arm, then malpractice may have occurred.

Causation

Attorney malpractice claims are based on the evidence that the attorney committed mistakes that led to financial losses for the client. For instance the lawyer fails to file a lawsuit within the prescribed time of limitations, leading to the case being lost for ever the person who was injured can bring legal malpractice actions.

It is important to understand that not all errors made by attorneys constitute wrong. Mistakes in strategy and planning do not typically constitute malpractice attorneys have lots of freedom to make decisions based on their judgments as long as they're reasonable.

The law also gives attorneys a lot of discretion to conduct a discovery process on the behalf of clients, so provided that the decision was not unreasonable or negligent. Legal malpractice can be triggered when a lawyer fails to find important documents or information, such as medical reports or witness statements. Other instances of malpractice include the failure to include certain defendants or claims, such as the mistake of not remembering a survival number for an unjustly-dead case or the inability to communicate with clients.

It is also important to remember the fact that the plaintiff must show that if it wasn't the lawyer's negligence, they could have won their case. The claim of the plaintiff for malpractice will be dismissed if it's not proved. This makes it difficult to bring a legal malpractice claim. This is why it's crucial to hire an experienced attorney to represent you.

Damages

A plaintiff must show that the attorney's actions have caused actual financial losses to prevail in a legal Malpractice Attorney lawsuit. In the case of a lawsuit this has to be proven with evidence such as expert testimony and correspondence between the attorney and the client. The plaintiff must also show that a reasonable attorney would have prevented the damage caused by the lawyer's negligence. This is referred to as proximate cause.

The causes of malpractice vary. Some of the most common kinds of malpractice are failing to adhere to a deadline, which includes the statute of limitations, a failure to conduct a conflict check or other due diligence of the case, not applying law to a client's situation, breaching a fiduciary duty (i.e. the commingling of funds from a trust account with an attorney's own accounts, mishandling a case and not communicating with the client are just a few examples of misconduct.

In most medical malpractice cases the plaintiff seeks compensatory damages. These compensations compensate the victim for out-of-pocket expenses as well as expenses like medical and hospitals bills, equipment costs to aid in recovery, and lost wages. Victims can also claim non-economic damages like pain and discomfort or loss of enjoyment in their lives, as well as emotional anxiety.

Legal malpractice cases often involve claims for compensatory as well as punitive damages. The former compensates victims for the loss resulting from the negligence of the attorney, Malpractice Lawsuit whereas the latter is intended to deter future malpractice by the defendant.