Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys hold a fiduciary relationship with their clients and are expected to act with diligence, care and competence. But, as with all professionals, attorneys make mistakes.

Not every mistake made by an attorney can be considered legal malpractice. To prove negligence in a legal sense the victim must demonstrate the breach of duty, duty, causation and damage. Let's review each of these aspects.

Duty-Free

Doctors and other medical professionals swear to use their education and expertise to treat patients and not cause harm to others. A patient's legal right to be compensated for injuries sustained due to medical malpractice is based on the notion of the duty of care. Your attorney can help you determine whether or not your doctor's actions violated the duty of care, and whether those breaches caused injury or illness to you.

To establish a duty of care, your lawyer needs to establish that a medical professional has a legal relationship with you that had a fiduciary obligation to act with a reasonable level of expertise and care. This can be demonstrated through eyewitness testimony, doctor-patient documents and expert testimony from doctors who have similar education, experience and training.

Your lawyer will also need to prove that the medical professional violated their duty of care by failing to adhere to the accepted standards of their area of expertise. This is commonly known as negligence. Your lawyer will be able to compare what the defendant did with what a reasonable person would do in the same situation.

Then, your lawyer has to show that the defendant's breach of duty directly resulted in the loss or injury you suffered. This is referred to as causation, and your attorney will use evidence like your medical reports, witness statements and expert testimony to demonstrate that the defendant's inability to meet the standards of care in your case was a direct cause of your injury or loss.

Breach

A doctor has a duty of care for his patients that corresponds to professional medical standards. If a doctor fails to adhere to these standards and the resulting failure causes an injury that is medically negligent, negligence could result. Expert witness testimony from medical professionals that have the same training, certifications and skills can help determine the quality of care in any given situation. Federal and state laws and institute policies also define what doctors must do for specific types of patients.

To prevail in a malpractice case it must be proven that the doctor violated his or their duty of care, and that the breach was a direct cause of an injury. This is known in legal terms as the causation factor and it is crucial to prove it. For example in the event that a damaged arm requires an xray, the doctor must properly fix the arm and place it in a cast for proper healing. If the doctor was unable to complete the procedure and the patient suffered permanent loss of function of that arm, then malpractice may have occurred.

Causation

Attorney malpractice claims are built on the basis of evidence that the attorney committed mistakes that led to financial losses for the client. Legal malpractice claims may be brought by the injured party in the event that, for instance, the attorney fails to file the suit within the timeframe of the statute of limitations and the case being permanently lost.

It is important to recognize that not all errors made by lawyers constitute malpractice. Mistakes in strategy and malpractice planning are not usually considered to be malpractice, and attorneys have the ability to make decisions based on their judgments as long as they are reasonable.

The law also gives attorneys ample discretion to refrain from performing discovery on behalf of a client in the event that the reason for the delay was not unreasonable or negligent. Inability to find important documents or facts like medical reports or statements of witnesses or medical reports, could be an instance of legal malpractice lawsuit. Other examples of malpractice are the inability to add certain defendants or claims, for instance forgetting a survival count for an unjustly-dead case or the constant failure to communicate with clients.

It is also important to note the fact that the plaintiff has to demonstrate that, if it weren't the lawyer's negligence they would have prevailed. The plaintiff's claim of malpractice is deemed invalid if it's not proved. This is why it's difficult to bring a legal malpractice claim. It is important to employ an experienced attorney.

Damages

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

It can happen in many different ways. Some of the more common kinds of malpractice are the failure to adhere to a deadline, which includes a statute of limitation, failure to conduct a conflict check or other due diligence check on the case, not applying law to a client's circumstance, breaching a fiduciary duty (i.e. commingling trust account funds with attorney's personal accounts) or a mishandling of a case, and not communicating with clients.

In most medical malpractice cases, the plaintiff will seek compensatory damages. They are awarded to the victim in exchange for expenses out of pocket and losses, like hospital and medical bills, the cost of equipment required to aid in recovery, and lost wages. In addition, the victims can seek non-economic damages, like suffering and suffering as well as loss of enjoyment life and emotional distress.

In a lot of legal malpractice cases, there are claims for punitive and compensatory damages. The first is meant to compensate victims for losses caused by the negligence of the attorney while the latter is intended to prevent future mistakes on the defendant's part.