Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys hold a fiduciary relationship with their clients and are expected to act with care, diligence and ability. Attorneys make mistakes just like any other professional.

Not every mistake made by an attorney constitutes an act of malpractice. To demonstrate legal malpractice, an aggrieved party has to prove duty, breach, causation and damage. Let's examine each of these aspects.

Duty

Medical professionals and doctors swear to use their training and skills to cure patients and not cause harm to others. Duty of care is the foundation for a patient's right to compensation if they are injured by medical negligence. Your attorney will determine if the actions of your doctor violated the duty of care and if the breach caused injury or illness.

Your lawyer must demonstrate that the medical professional you hired owed the duty of a fiduciary to perform with reasonable skill and care. This relationship can be established through eyewitness testimony, doctor-patient documents and expert testimony from doctors with similar education, experience, and training.

Your lawyer will also have to show that the medical professional violated their duty of care in not adhering to the accepted standards of their field. This is often called negligence. Your lawyer will compare the defendant's behavior to what a reasonable individual would perform in the same situation.

Your lawyer must also show that the breach by the defendant caused direct injury or loss. This is known as causation. Your attorney will use evidence like your doctor-patient documents, witness statements, and expert testimony to prove that the defendant's failure to live up to the standards of care in your case was the direct cause of your injury or loss.

Breach

A doctor is obligated to patients to perform duties of care that are consistent with the standards of medical professional practice. If a doctor does not meet these standards, and malpractice lawsuit the failure results in an injury, then medical malpractice or negligence can occur. Typically, expert testimony from medical professionals who have similar training, expertise and certifications will aid in determining what the best standard of treatment should be in a particular case. State and federal 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 this breach was the direct cause of an injury. In legal terms, this is referred to as the causation element and it is crucial that it is established. If a physician has to obtain an xray of an injured arm, they must place the arm in a casting and correctly set it. If the doctor was unable to perform this task and the patient was left with an irreparable loss of use of the arm, then malpractice may have occurred.

Causation

Attorney malpractice lawsuit claims are based on evidence that demonstrates that the attorney's mistakes caused financial losses to the client. Legal malpractice claims can be brought by the person who was injured for example, if the lawyer is unable to file a lawsuit within the timeframe of the statute of limitations and the case being thrown out forever.

It is important to understand that not all mistakes made by attorneys are mistakes that constitute malpractice. Strategy and planning errors are not typically considered to be negligence. Attorneys have a broad decision-making discretion to make decisions so long as they're in the right place.

Likewise, the law gives attorneys considerable leeway to fail to perform discovery on the behalf of their clients, as in the event that it is not unreasonable or negligent. Inability to find important information or documents like medical reports or witness statements could be a sign of legal malpractice. Other instances of malpractice include inability to include certain claims or defendants for example, like forgetting to file a survival count in a wrongful death case or the consistent and persistent failure to contact clients.

It's also important to keep in mind that it must be established that, had it not been the lawyer's negligence, the plaintiff would have won the case. The plaintiff's claim for malpractice will be rejected if it is not proven. This makes the filing of legal malpractice claims a challenge. It is crucial to find an experienced attorney.

Damages

A plaintiff must show that the lawyer's actions led to actual financial losses to win a legal malpractice suit. In a lawsuit, this has to be demonstrated using evidence, like expert testimony or correspondence between the attorney and the client. In addition, the plaintiff must prove that a reasonable lawyer could have prevented the harm that was caused by the attorney's negligence. This is known as the proximate cause.

Malpractice can occur in many different ways. The most frequent mistakes are: failing to meet a deadline or statute of limitations; failing to conduct a conflict check on an instance; applying the law in a way that is not appropriate to the client's specific circumstances; and violating the fiduciary duty (i.e. Commingling funds from a trust account the attorney's personal accounts or handling a case in a wrong manner, and not communicating with the client are all examples of malpractice lawyer.

In most medical malpractice cases the plaintiff will seek compensatory damages. They compensate the victim for expenses out of pocket and losses, for malpractice lawsuit example medical and hospital bills, costs of equipment that aids in recovery, and lost wages. In addition, victims may claim non-economic damages, such as suffering and suffering or loss of enjoyment life, and emotional distress.

Legal malpractice cases usually involve claims for compensatory or punitive damages. The former compensates victims for losses caused by the negligence of the attorney, while the latter is designed to discourage future misconduct by the defendant.