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Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys have a fiduciary responsibilities to their clients and they must act with a high degree of skill, diligence and care. Attorneys make mistakes just like any other professional.

The mistakes made by an attorney are malpractice. To prove negligence in a legal sense the victim must demonstrate obligation, breach of duty, causation, and damages. Let's take a look at each one of these aspects.

Duty

Doctors and other medical professionals swear to use their training and skills to cure patients and not cause harm to others. The duty of care is the basis for patients' right to compensation for injuries caused by medical negligence. Your attorney can determine if the actions of your doctor breached the duty of medical care and if those breaches caused injury or illness.

To prove a duty to care, your lawyer will need to demonstrate that a medical professional had a legal relationship with you that have a fiduciary obligation to exercise an acceptable level of skill and care. Proving that this relationship existed could require evidence like the records of your doctor-patient, eyewitness statements and expert testimony from doctors who have similar knowledge, experience, and education.

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

Your lawyer will also need to prove that the breach by the defendant directly caused your loss or injury. This is referred to as causation. Your attorney will use evidence, such as your doctor/patient records, witness testimony, and expert testimony, to show that the defendant's inability to meet the standard of care was the direct reason for the loss or injury to you.

Breach

A doctor is bound by a duty of care to his patients that corresponds to professional medical standards. If a physician fails to meet those standards and the failure results in injury, then medical malpractice or negligence could occur. Expert evidence from medical professionals who have similar training, certifications or experience can help determine the level of care in a particular situation. State and federal laws, as well as institute policies, determine what doctors are required to do for certain kinds of patients.

In order to win a malpractice claim the evidence must prove that the doctor breached his or her duty to care and that the breach was the sole cause of an injury. This is known in legal terms as the causation element and it is vital to establish. For example an injured arm requires an x-ray, the doctor has to properly set the arm and place it in a cast to ensure proper healing. If the physician failed to do so and the patient suffered an irreparable loss of function of that arm, then malpractice may have occurred.

Causation

Legal malpractice claims built on the basis of evidence that the attorney made mistakes that led to financial losses for the client. Legal malpractice Attorney claims can be brought by the person who was injured when, for instance, the lawyer does not file the lawsuit within the timeframe of the statute of limitations and this results in the case being permanently lost.

It is crucial to realize that not all mistakes made by attorneys are considered to be malpractice. Planning and strategy errors are not always considered to be malpractice. Attorneys have a wide decision-making discretion to make decisions as long as they're reasonable.

The law also allows attorneys considerable latitude to not perform discovery for a client, so long as the decision was not arbitrary or a case of negligence. Legal malpractice can be committed through the failure to uncover important documents or evidence, such as medical reports or witness statements. Other instances of malpractice lawsuit include failure to add certain claims or defendants for example, like forgetting to make a survival claim in a case of wrongful death, or the repeated and prolonged inability to contact a client.

It is also important to keep in mind the fact that the plaintiff must demonstrate that, if it weren't the lawyer's negligence, they could have won their case. Otherwise, the plaintiff's claim for malpractice attorney malpractice will be denied. This requirement makes the filing of legal malpractice claims a challenge. It is crucial to find an experienced attorney.

Damages

A plaintiff must prove that the lawyer's actions led to actual financial losses to win a legal malpractice suit. This should be proved in a lawsuit through evidence such as expert testimony, correspondence between client and attorney or billing records, and other records. A plaintiff must also prove that a reasonable lawyer could have prevented the harm caused by the negligence of the lawyer. This is known as proximate cause.

It can happen in a variety of ways. Some of the more common kinds of malpractice are failing to adhere to a deadline, which includes a statute of limitations, a failure to conduct a conflict-check or other due diligence check on a case, improperly applying the law to the client's situation and breaching a fiduciary responsibility (i.e. mixing funds from a trust account with the attorney's personal accounts as well as not communicating with the client are all examples of malpractice.

Medical malpractice lawsuits typically involve claims for compensatory damages. They compensate the victim for out-of-pocket expenses and losses, for example medical and Malpractice attorney hospital bills, the cost of equipment required to aid in recovery, and lost wages. Victims can also claim non-economic damages like discomfort and pain, loss of enjoyment of 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 a victim for the loss resulting from the negligence of the attorney, whereas the latter is intended to discourage future malpractice by the defendant.