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Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys have a fiduciary responsibilities to their clients, and they are expected act with skill, diligence and care. However, like all professionals attorneys make mistakes.

There are many mistakes made by attorneys are malpractice. To establish legal malpractice, the aggrieved party must show duty, breach, causation and damage. Let's take a look at each of these components.

Duty-Free

Medical professionals and doctors take an oath to use their knowledge and expertise to treat patients and not cause additional harm. A patient's legal right to be compensated for injuries sustained due to medical malpractice is based on the concept of the duty of care. Your attorney will determine if the actions of your doctor breached the duty of medical care and if the breach caused you injury or illness.

To establish a duty of care, your lawyer has to demonstrate that a medical professional had a legal relationship with you that have a fiduciary obligation to exercise a reasonable level of competence and care. Proving that this relationship existed may require evidence, such as your records of your doctor-patient relationship or eyewitness testimony, as well as experts from doctors with similar knowledge, 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 care in their field. This is typically described as negligence. Your lawyer will evaluate what the defendant did with what a reasonable person would do in a similar situation.

In addition, your lawyer must prove that the defendant's breach of duty directly caused injury or loss to you. This is referred to as causation. Your lawyer will use evidence like your doctor or patient records, witness testimony and expert testimony, to prove that the defendant’s failure to adhere to the standard of care was the main reason for the loss or injury to you.

Breach

A doctor owes patients duties of care that adhere to the highest standards of medical professionalism. If a doctor does not meet those standards, and the result is an injury or medical malpractice, then negligence could result. Expert testimonials from medical professionals who have the same training, certifications and skills can help determine the quality of care in a particular situation. Federal and state laws and institute policies also determine what doctors are required to do for specific types of patients.

To prevail in a malpractice lawsuit the evidence must prove that the doctor breached his or her duty of care and that the breach was the direct cause of an injury. In legal terms, this is known as the causation component and it is crucial that it is established. For instance in the event that a damaged arm requires an x-ray the doctor has to properly set the arm and place it in a cast for proper healing. If the doctor fails to do this and the patient suffers a permanent loss in use of the arm, malpractice may be at play.

Causation

Legal malpractice claims based on the evidence that the attorney committed errors that resulted in financial losses to the client. For instance the lawyer does not file a lawsuit within the statute of limitations, leading to the case being lost forever the person who was injured could bring legal malpractice lawsuits.

It is important to understand that not all mistakes made by attorneys constitute malpractice. Strategies and planning mistakes do not usually constitute negligence. Attorneys have a wide decision-making discretion to make decisions, as long as they're reasonable.

Likewise, the law gives attorneys a wide range of options to refuse to conduct a discovery process on a client's behalf, as in the event that it is not unreasonable or negligent. Legal malpractice can be caused by not obtaining crucial documents or information, such as medical reports or witness statements. Other examples of malpractice are the inability to add certain defendants or claims, for instance not noticing a survival count in the case of wrongful death, or the repeated failure to communicate with clients.

It's also important that it must be proven that if it weren't the negligence of the lawyer the plaintiff would have won the case. If not, the plaintiff's claims for malpractice will be rejected. This makes the process of bringing legal malpractice lawsuits difficult. It's essential to choose an experienced attorney to represent you.

Damages

A plaintiff must show that the attorney's actions have caused actual financial losses to win a legal malpractice suit. In a lawsuit, this needs to be demonstrated using evidence, such as expert testimony and correspondence between the client and attorney. In addition the plaintiff has to prove that a reasonable lawyer could have avoided the damage caused by the attorney's negligence. This is referred to as proximate cause.

The act of malpractice can be triggered in a variety of different ways. Some of the most common kinds of malpractice are failing to adhere to a deadline, which includes the statute of limitations, failing to perform a conflict check or any other due diligence on a case, improperly applying the law to a client's case or breaking a fiduciary duty (i.e. the commingling of trust account funds with attorney's personal accounts) or mishandling a case, and not communicating with a client.

In most medical malpractice cases, the plaintiff will seek compensatory damages. These damages compensate the victim for out-of-pocket expenses as well as expenses like hospital and medical bills, costs of equipment to aid in recovery, and lost wages. Victims are also able to claim non-economic damages such as discomfort and pain or loss of enjoyment in their lives, and emotional suffering.

Legal malpractice attorneys cases often involve claims for compensatory and punitive damages. The former compensates victims for the loss resulting from the attorney's negligence, while the latter is intended to deter future malpractice by the defendant.