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Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys are bound by a fiduciary obligation to their clients and they must act with a high degree of skill, diligence and care. But, as with all professionals attorneys make mistakes.

The mistakes made by an attorney can be considered malpractice. To prove legal malpractice lawsuit, an aggrieved party has to prove duty, breach, causation and damages. Let's look at each one of these aspects.

Duty-Free

Medical professionals and doctors swear to apply their education and experience to help patients and not cause harm to others. The legal right of a patient to compensation for injuries suffered from medical malpractice hinges on the notion of the duty of care. Your attorney can assist you determine if your doctor's actions violated this duty of care, and if the breach caused injury or illness to you.

To establish a duty of care, your lawyer must to show that a medical professional had an official relationship with you that were bound by a fiduciary duty to perform their duties with an acceptable level of skill and care. Establishing that this relationship existed could require evidence like the records of your doctor and patient, eyewitness statements and malpractice expert testimony from doctors who have similar experiences, education and training.

Your lawyer will also have to prove that the medical professional breached their duty of care by failing to follow the accepted standards of their area of expertise. This is often known as 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 defendant's breach caused direct loss or injury. This is known as causation. Your attorney will rely on evidence like your medical documents, witness statements, and expert testimony to show that the defendant's failure to uphold the standards of care in your case was the direct cause of your loss or injury.

Breach

A doctor has a duty of care to his patients that corresponds to professional medical standards. If a doctor does not live up to those standards and that failure results in injury, negligence and medical malpractice might occur. Typically experts' testimony from medical professionals who have similar training, expertise and certifications will help determine what the appropriate standard of treatment should be in a specific situation. State and federal laws as well as institute policies also help determine what doctors should perform for specific types of patients.

To win a malpractice case it is necessary to prove that the doctor breached his or their duty of care, and that this breach was a direct cause of injury. In legal terms, this is called the causation factor and it is vital to establish. If a doctor needs to conduct an x-ray examination of a broken arm, they have to put the arm in a cast and properly place it. If the physician failed to perform this task and the patient was left with permanent loss of use of the arm, then malpractice may have occurred.

Causation

Attorney malpractice claims are based on evidence that shows the attorney's mistakes caused financial losses to the client. For example the lawyer fails to file a lawsuit within the statute of limitations, leading to the case being lost for ever the party who suffered damages can bring legal malpractice actions.

However, it's important to understand that not all mistakes made by attorneys are malpractice. Strategies and mistakes do not typically constitute malpractice, and attorneys have lots of freedom to make judgement calls so long as they are reasonable.

The law also grants attorneys ample discretion to refrain from performing discovery for a client, so long as the reason for the delay was not unreasonable or a result of negligence. Failing to discover important documents or facts, such as medical or witness statements could be a sign of legal malpractice. Other examples of malpractice include a inability to include certain claims or defendants for example, like forgetting to submit a survival count in a case of wrongful death, or the repeated and prolonged inability to contact a client.

It is also important to remember the fact that the plaintiff needs to prove that if not due to the lawyer's negligent behavior, they would have prevailed. Otherwise, the plaintiff's claim for malpractice will be denied. This requirement makes bringing legal malpractice claims difficult. This is why it's essential to choose an experienced attorney to represent you.

Damages

To prevail in a legal malpractice suit, plaintiffs must show financial losses that result from the actions of the attorney. In a lawsuit, this needs to be proven with evidence like expert testimony or correspondence between the attorney and the client. The plaintiff must also show that a reasonable attorney could have prevented the harm caused by the lawyer's negligence. This is known as proximate cause.

Malpractice can occur in many different ways. Some of the most common types of malpractice include the failure to meet a deadline, including the statute of limitations, a failure to conduct a conflict check or any other due diligence on the case, not applying law to a client's situation or breaching a fiduciary obligation (i.e. merging funds from a trust account the attorney's own accounts as well as failing to communicate with the client are all examples of malpractice.

Medical malpractice lawsuits typically involve claims for compensation damages. These compensate the victim for the expenses out of pocket and losses, for example medical and malpractice hospital bills, costs of equipment needed to aid in recovering, and lost wages. Victims can also seek non-economic damages such as pain and discomfort as well as loss of enjoyment from their lives, and emotional anxiety.

Legal malpractice cases typically involve claims for compensatory and punitive damages. The former compensates a victim for losses caused by the negligence of an attorney, while the latter is intended to deter future malpractice by the defendant.