Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys have a fiduciary responsibilities to their clients and they must behave with a degree of diligence, skill and care. Attorneys make mistakes, just like any other professional.

There are many mistakes made by lawyers are considered to be malpractice. To demonstrate legal malpractice, an aggrieved person must demonstrate the breach of duty, duty, causation and damages. Let's look at each of these elements.

Duty

Doctors and other medical professionals swear to use their education and experience to help patients and not cause harm to others. The duty of care is the basis for the right of patients to receive compensation for injuries caused by medical negligence. Your attorney can assist you determine whether or not your doctor's actions breached this duty of care, and whether those breaches caused injuries or illness to you.

To prove a duty of care, your lawyer will need to establish that a medical professional has an official relationship with you in which they had a fiduciary obligation to exercise a reasonable level of competence and care. This relationship may be proven by eyewitness testimony of witnesses, doctor-patient documents and expert testimony from doctors with similar education, experience, and training.

Your lawyer must also prove that the medical professional breached their duty of care by failing to adhere to the standards of practice that are accepted in their field. This is commonly referred to by the term negligence. Your lawyer will assess the actions of the defendant to what a reasonable person would do in the same situation.

Your lawyer will also need to prove that the breach of the defendant's duty led directly to your injury or loss. This is called causation. Your attorney will use evidence including your doctor's or patient documents, witness testimony and expert testimony to prove that the defendant’s failure to meet the standards of care was the primary cause of the injury or loss to you.

Breach

A doctor has a duty to patients of care that are consistent with the standards of medical professional practice. If a doctor ict.wku.ac.th fails to meet the standards, and the result is an injury, then medical malpractice or negligence may occur. Expert testimonials from medical professionals who have the same training, certifications and skills can help determine the standard of care in a given situation. Federal and state laws, as well as institute policies, help define what doctors are expected to do for certain types of patients.

To be successful in a malpractice case the evidence must prove that the doctor acted in violation of his or her duty of take care of patients and that the breach was a direct reason for an injury. This is known in legal terms as the causation element, and it is essential that it be established. If a doctor is required to conduct an x-ray examination of an injured arm, they have to put the arm in a casting and correctly place it. If the doctor failed to do so and the patient was left with an unavoidable loss of function of that arm, then malpractice could have occurred.

Causation

Attorney malpractice claims are built on the basis of evidence that a lawyer made errors that resulted in financial losses to the client. For example when a lawyer does not file a lawsuit within the statute of limitations, resulting in the case being lost for ever, the injured party can file legal malpractice claims.

It's important to know that not all mistakes made by lawyers are considered to be malpractice. Planning and strategy errors are not typically considered to be the definition of malpractice. Attorneys have a wide choice of discretion when it comes to making decisions, as long as they're reasonable.

The law also gives attorneys considerable leeway to fail to perform discovery on a client's behalf, as provided that the decision was not unreasonable or negligent. Legal malpractice is committed when a lawyer fails to find important documents or facts, like medical reports or witness statements. Other examples of malpractice are a inability to include certain claims or defendants such as omitting to submit a survival count in a wrongful-death case or the consistent and long-running failure to contact clients.

It's also important that it must be established that if it weren't the lawyer's negligence, the plaintiff would have won the underlying case. If not, the plaintiff's claims for malpractice will be rejected. This requirement makes it difficult to bring an action for legal malpractice. It is crucial to find an experienced attorney.

Damages

To win a legal malpractice lawsuit the plaintiff must prove actual financial losses resulting from the actions of an attorney. This should be proved in a lawsuit using evidence such as expert testimony, correspondence between the client and attorney or billing records, and other documentation. A plaintiff must also prove that a reasonable attorney could have prevented the harm caused by the lawyer's negligence. This is known as proximate cause.

The act of malpractice can be triggered in a variety of different ways. The most frequent kinds of malpractice are failing to meet a deadline, such as a statute of limitations, a failure to conduct a conflict check or other due diligence of the case, not applying law to a client's circumstance, breaching a fiduciary duty (i.e. Commingling funds from a trust account with an attorney's own accounts as well as not communicating with the client are all examples of malpractice.

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

Legal malpractice cases often involve claims for compensatory or punitive damages. The first compensates the victim for the damages caused by the attorney's negligence while the latter is meant to deter future malpractice on the part of the defendant.