Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

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

Some errors made by attorneys are malpractice. To establish legal malpractice, the aggrieved person must demonstrate duty, breach, causation and damage. Let's look at each of these elements.

Duty-Free

Doctors and other medical professionals swear to apply their education and experience to help patients and not cause further harm. The legal right of a patient to be compensated for injuries sustained from medical malpractice hinges on the notion of the duty of care. Your attorney will determine if your doctor's actions violated the duty of care and if these breaches resulted in injury or illness.

To establish a duty of care, your lawyer will need to show that a medical professional had a legal relationship with you that owed you a fiduciary responsibility to act with an acceptable level of expertise and care. This can be proved by eyewitness testimony, physician-patient documents and expert testimony from doctors who have similar education, experience, and training.

Your lawyer must also demonstrate that the medical professional violated their duty of care by not living up to the accepted standards of care in their area of expertise. This is often referred to as negligence, and your attorney will examine the defendant's actions to what a reasonable individual would do in the same circumstance.

Your lawyer must also prove that the breach of the defendant's duty directly caused your loss or injury. This is called causation. Your lawyer will make use of evidence, such as your doctor/patient reports, witness testimony and expert testimony, to prove that the defendant’s failure to comply with the standard of care was the direct cause of the injury or loss to you.

Breach

A doctor is required to perform a duty of care to his patients that conforms to the highest standards of medical practice. If a physician fails to meet the standards, and the result is an injury and/or medical malpractice, then negligence can occur. Expert testimonials from medical professionals who have similar training, certificates as well as experience and qualifications can help determine the quality of care for a specific situation. State and federal laws, along with policies of the institute, help determine what doctors are required to do for certain kinds of patients.

To prevail in a Malpractice attorney case the case must be proved that the doctor breached his or her duty of care and that the breach was a direct cause of an injury. This is known in legal terms as the causation component and it is imperative that it is established. If a doctor is required to take an x-ray of a broken arm, they must place the arm in a casting and correctly set it. If the doctor failed to do so and the patient was left with a permanent loss of use of that arm, then malpractice may have occurred.

Causation

Attorney malpractice claims rely on evidence that the attorney's errors resulted in financial losses for the client. For example, if a lawyer does not file a lawsuit within the statute of limitations, resulting in the case being lost for ever the person who was injured could bring legal malpractice lawsuits.

It is crucial to realize that not all mistakes by attorneys are malpractice. Mistakes in strategy and planning aren't usually considered to be a violation of the law attorneys have a lot of latitude to make judgement calls so long as they are reasonable.

The law also gives attorneys a lot of discretion to conduct discovery on behalf of behalf of a client, so long as it was not unreasonable or negligent. Failure to uncover important details or documents, such as medical reports or statements of witnesses could be a sign of legal malpractice. Other instances of malpractice include the failure to add certain defendants or claims, like forgetting a survival count for a wrongful-death case, or Malpractice Attorney the repeated failure to communicate with clients.

It's also important to keep in mind that it must be established that, had it not been the negligence of the lawyer, the plaintiff would have won the case. In the event that it is not, the plaintiff's claim for malpractice will be rejected. This makes it difficult to file an action for legal malpractice. It is crucial to find an experienced attorney.

Damages

A plaintiff must demonstrate that the lawyer's actions led to actual financial losses in order to prevail in a legal malpractice lawsuit. This has to be demonstrated in a lawsuit with evidence such as expert testimony, correspondence between client and attorney or billing records, and other evidence. In addition the plaintiff must show that a reasonable lawyer could have prevented the damage caused by the attorney's negligence. This is known as proximate causation.

The definition of malpractice can be found in a variety of ways. Some of the most common kinds of malpractice are failing to meet a deadline, such as the statute of limitations, failing to perform a conflict check or other due diligence on a case, improperly applying law to a client's situation, breaching a fiduciary duty (i.e. Commingling funds from a trust account an attorney's account, mishandling a case and failing to communicate with the client are all examples of malpractice.

In the majority of medical malpractice cases the plaintiff seeks compensation damages. These damages compensate the victim 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 can also seek non-economic damages such as pain and discomfort as well as loss of enjoyment from their lives, as well as emotional stress.

In many legal malpractice cases, there are claims for punitive and compensatory damages. The former compensates victims for losses caused by the attorney's negligence, while the latter is designed to deter future malpractice attorneys by the defendant.