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Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys are bound by a fiduciary obligation to their clients, and they must behave with a high degree of skill, diligence and care. Attorneys make mistakes, as do other professional.

A mistake made by an attorney can be considered negligence. To prove legal negligence the person who was hurt must prove the duty, breach of duty, causation and damage. Let's take a look at each of these elements.

Duty-Free

Medical professionals and doctors swear an oath that they will use their skills and experience to treat patients and not cause additional harm. The legal right of a patient to be compensated for injuries sustained from medical malpractice rests on the notion of duty of care. Your lawyer can assist you determine whether or not the actions of your doctor violated this duty of care, and whether these breaches caused injury or illness to you.

Your lawyer has to prove that the medical professional owed you the duty of a fiduciary to perform with reasonable competence and care. Proving that this relationship existed may require evidence, such as the records of your doctor-patient eyewitness accounts and expert testimony from doctors who have similar experiences, education 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 area of expertise. This is often referred to as negligence, and your attorney will examine the defendant's actions with what a reasonable person would do in the same situation.

Your lawyer must also demonstrate that the breach of the defendant's duty caused direct injury or loss. This is known as causation, and your attorney will rely on evidence like your doctor-patient documents, witness statements, and expert testimony to prove that the defendant's failure to uphold the standard of care in your case was a direct cause of your injury or loss.

Breach

A doctor is obligated to patients to perform duties of care that reflect professional standards in medical practice. If a physician fails to live up to those standards and that failure results in injury, then medical malpractice or negligence could occur. Expert testimony from medical professionals who possess similar qualifications, training or experience can help determine the appropriate level of care for a specific situation. State and federal laws, as well as policies of the institute, help define what doctors are expected to provide for specific types of patients.

To win a malpractice claim it must be established that the doctor acted in violation of his or her duty to take care of patients and that the breach was the sole cause of an injury. This is referred to in legal terms as the causation element, and it is imperative to establish. If a doctor needs to conduct an x-ray examination of a broken arm, they must place the arm in a cast and properly place it. If the doctor was unable to perform this task and the patient suffered an irreparable loss of function 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. Legal malpractice claims may be brought by the person who was injured if, for example, the lawyer fails to file the lawsuit within the timeframe of the statute of limitations and this results in the case being thrown out forever.

It's important to know that not all mistakes by attorneys are considered to be malpractice attorneys. Strategies and planning mistakes are not always considered to be negligence. Attorneys have a wide choice of discretion when it comes to making decisions as long as they're able to make them in a reasonable manner.

Likewise, the law gives attorneys considerable leeway to fail to conduct a discovery process on the behalf of clients, so long as the action was not unreasonable or negligent. Legal malpractice can be caused by not obtaining crucial documents or facts, such as medical reports or witness statements. Other instances of malpractice could be a inability to include certain defendants or claims for example, like forgetting to make a survival claim in a case of wrongful death or the consistent and persistent failure to communicate with the client.

It is also important to consider the fact that the plaintiff must prove that if not due to the lawyer's negligent behavior, they would have prevailed. In the event that it is not, the plaintiff's claim for malpractice lawsuit will be denied. This makes the process of bringing legal malpractice lawsuits difficult. It's important to find an experienced attorney to represent you.

Damages

A plaintiff must prove that the attorney's actions have caused actual financial losses in order to prevail in a legal malpractice lawsuit. This can be proven in a lawsuit with evidence like expert testimony, correspondence between client and attorney along with billing records and other evidence. In addition, the plaintiff must prove that a reasonable lawyer would have prevented the harm caused by the negligence of the attorney. This is called proximate causation.

Malpractice can occur in many different ways. The most frequent mistakes are: failing to meet the deadline or statute of limitations; failing to conduct a conflict check on cases; applying law in a way that is not appropriate to the client's specific circumstances; and violating a fiduciary obligation (i.e. Commingling funds from a trust account with an attorney's account, mishandling a case and failing to communicate with the client are just a few examples of misconduct.

In the majority of medical malpractice cases the plaintiff will seek compensation damages. The compensations pay for out-of-pocket expenses as well as losses, such as medical and hospitals bills, costs of equipment to aid in recovery, and lost wages. Victims can also seek non-economic damages like discomfort and pain as well as loss of enjoyment from their lives, malpractice claim as well as emotional distress.

In a lot of legal malpractice cases there are claims for punitive or compensatory damages. The first compensates the victim for the losses caused by the negligence of the attorney while the latter is intended to deter future malpractice by the defendant's side.