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Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys are bound by a fiduciary obligation to their clients, and they are expected act with a degree of diligence, skill and care. However, like all professionals, attorneys make mistakes.

Not all mistakes made by an attorney are malpractice. To prove legal negligence the person who was hurt must prove obligation, breach of obligation, causation, and damage. Let's review each of these aspects.

Duty

Doctors and medical professionals take an oath that they will use their expertise and knowledge to treat patients, not to cause further harm. The legal right of a patient to compensation for injuries suffered due to medical malpractice is based on the notion of duty of care. Your attorney can determine if the actions of your doctor violated the duty of care and if those breaches resulted in your injury or illness.

To establish a duty of care, your lawyer needs to prove that a medical professional has an legal relationship with you and had a fiduciary obligation to act with reasonable expertise and care. This relationship can be established by eyewitness testimony of witnesses, doctor-patient records and expert testimony of doctors who have similar education, experience, and training.

Your lawyer will also have to establish that the medical professional violated their duty of caring by failing to follow the accepted standards in their field. This is typically described as negligence. Your lawyer will evaluate the actions of the defendant to what a reasonable individual would do in a similar situation.

Your lawyer must also demonstrate that the breach of the defendant's duty directly caused your 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 show that the defendant's failure to adhere to the standard of care in your case was a direct cause of your loss or injury.

Breach

A doctor owes patients duties of care that are consistent with professional medical standards. If a doctor fails to adhere to these standards and this causes injury, then medical malpractice and negligence could occur. Expert testimony from medical professionals who have similar training, certificates as well as experience and qualifications can help determine the level of care in a particular situation. State and federal laws, along with institute policies, define what doctors are expected to do for certain kinds of patients.

In order to win a malpractice claim it must be proved that the doctor violated 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 vital that it is established. If a physician has to take an x-ray of an injured arm, they have to put the arm in a casting and correctly set it. If the doctor is unable to perform this, and the patient suffers a 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 errors resulted in financial losses for the client. For example when a lawyer fails to file a lawsuit within the prescribed time of limitations, which results in the case being lost for ever the party who suffered damages could bring legal malpractice lawsuits.

It is crucial to be aware that not all mistakes made by attorneys constitute wrong. Strategies and planning mistakes are not typically considered to be negligence. Attorneys have a wide decision-making discretion to make decisions as long as they're reasonable.

The law also gives attorneys a lot of discretion to conduct discovery on a client's behalf, as long as the action was not negligent or unreasonable. Legal malpractice is committed when a lawyer fails to find important documents or facts, such as medical reports or witness statements. Other instances of malpractice could be a failure to add certain claims or defendants, such as forgetting to make a survival claim in a wrongful death case or the consistent and prolonged inability to communicate with the client.

It's also important to keep in mind that it must be proven that if it weren't the negligence of the lawyer the plaintiff would have won the underlying case. Otherwise, the plaintiff's claim for malpractice will be denied. This requirement makes the process of bringing legal malpractice lawsuits difficult. It's crucial to hire 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. This must be shown in a lawsuit with evidence like expert testimony, correspondence between client and attorney, billing records and other documentation. A plaintiff must also demonstrate that a reasonable lawyer could have prevented the harm caused by the negligence of the lawyer. This is known as proximate cause.

Malpractice can manifest in a number of different ways. The most frequent errors include: not meeting the deadline or statute of limitations; failing to conduct an investigation into a conflict in a case; applying the law in a way that is not appropriate to the client's particular situation; and breaking a fiduciary obligation (i.e. mixing trust account funds with attorney's personal accounts), mishandling of an instance, and failing to communicate with the client.

Medical malpractice lawyer suits typically involve claims for compensatory damages. These compensations compensate the victim for expenses out of pocket and losses, such as medical and hospitals bills, the cost of equipment to help recover and lost wages. Victims can also claim non-economic damages like pain and discomfort, loss of enjoyment of their lives, as well as emotional suffering.

Legal malpractice cases usually involve claims for compensatory and punitive damages. The first compensates victims for losses caused by negligence on the part of the attorney while the latter is meant to prevent future mistakes on the part of the defendant.