Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

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

Some mistakes made by attorneys are considered to be malpractice. To prove legal negligence the victim must demonstrate obligation, breach of obligation, causation, and damage. Let's examine each of these aspects.

Duty

Medical professionals and doctors swear by their training and experience to treat patients and not cause harm to others. The legal right of a patient to compensation for injuries sustained from medical malpractice rests on the notion of duty of care. Your attorney can determine if your doctor's actions violated the duty of care and if those breaches resulted in your injury or illness.

To prove a duty to care, your lawyer will need to prove that a medical professional had an legal relationship with you that have a fiduciary obligation to act with a reasonable level of competence and care. The proof of this relationship could require evidence like your records of your doctor-patient relationship, eyewitness statements and expert testimony from doctors with similar qualifications, experience and education.

Your lawyer will also have to prove that the medical professional breached their duty of care by not submitting to the accepted standards of practice in their field. This is often referred to by the term negligence. Your lawyer will assess what the defendant did to what a reasonable individual would do in a similar situation.

Your lawyer will also need to prove that the defendant's negligence led directly to your loss or injury. This is referred to as causation, and your attorney will rely on evidence like your doctor-patient documents, witness statements, and expert testimony to show 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 conform to professional standards in medical practice. If a physician fails to meet those standards and fails to do so causes injury, then medical malpractice and negligence could occur. Typically the testimony of medical professionals who have the same training, qualifications, certifications and experience will assist in determining what the minimum standard of medical care should be in a specific situation. Federal and state laws, as well as guidelines from the institute, help determine what doctors are required to provide for specific types of patients.

In order to win a malpractice claim the evidence must prove that the doctor acted in violation of his or her duty to care and that the violation was the direct cause of an injury. This is referred to in legal terms as the causation element, and it is essential that it be established. If a doctor needs to take an x-ray of a broken arm, they must put the arm in a cast and properly place it. If the doctor failed to complete the procedure and the patient suffered a permanent loss of use of the arm, then malpractice may have occurred.

Causation

Legal malpractice claims are based on evidence that the attorney made mistakes that led to financial losses for the client. Legal malpractice claims can be brought by the party who suffered the loss for example, if the lawyer fails to file the suit within the timeframe of the statute of limitations, which results in the case being lost forever.

It is important to understand that not all mistakes by attorneys are malpractice law firms. The mistakes that involve strategy and planning do not typically constitute malpractice attorney attorneys are given the ability in making judgment calls so long as they are reasonable.

Additionally, the law grants attorneys considerable leeway to fail to conduct discovery on behalf of a client's behalf, as provided that the decision was not unreasonable or negligent. The failure to discover crucial documents or facts, such as medical reports or statements of witnesses, is a potential example of legal malpractice. Other examples of malpractice include a failure to add certain claims or defendants such as failing to make a survival claim in a wrongful death lawsuit, or the repeated and long-running inability to communicate with clients.

It's also important to note that it has to be proven that, if not the negligence of the lawyer the plaintiff would have won the case. If not, the plaintiff's claims for malpractice will be denied. This makes the process of bringing legal malpractice lawsuits difficult. Therefore, it's important to choose a seasoned attorney to represent you.

Damages

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

Malpractice can occur in many different ways. Some of the most common malpractices include: failing a deadline or malpractice lawsuits statute of limitations; not performing the necessary conflict checks on an instance; applying the law incorrectly to a client's situation; or breaking the fiduciary obligation (i.e. mixing trust account funds with attorney's personal accounts) or mishandling the case, and failing to communicate with a client.

Medical malpractice lawsuits typically include claims for compensation damages. The compensations pay for out-of-pocket expenses as well as losses such as hospital and medical bills, the cost of equipment to aid recovery, and lost wages. Victims may also claim non-economic damages such as pain and discomfort and loss of enjoyment their lives, as well as emotional anxiety.

In a lot of legal malpractice cases, there are cases for punitive and compensatory damages. The former compensates victims for losses caused by the attorney's negligence while the latter is meant to prevent future mistakes by the defendant's side.