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Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys are in a fiduciary position with their clients and are required to conduct themselves with care, diligence and skill. However, just like any other professional attorneys make mistakes.

The errors made by attorneys are malpractice. To prove legal malpractice, an victim must prove obligation, breach, causation and damage. Let's look at each of these aspects.

Duty

Medical professionals and doctors swear an oath to use their skills and experience to cure patients, not causing further harm. The duty of care is the basis for the right of a patient to be compensated for injuries caused by medical malpractice. Your attorney can assist you determine if the actions of your doctor violated this duty of care, and whether those breaches caused injury or illness to you.

Your lawyer has to prove that the medical professional you hired owed the duty of a fiduciary to perform with reasonable skill and care. To prove that the relationship existed, you may require evidence, such as your records of your doctor-patient relationship or Malpractice lawsuits eyewitness evidence, or expert testimony from doctors with similar experiences, education and training.

Your lawyer must also show that the medical professional violated their duty of care by not submitting to the standards of practice that are accepted in their area of expertise. This is commonly described as negligence. Your lawyer will assess what the defendant did to what a reasonable person would do in the same situation.

Your lawyer must show that the defendant's breach of duty directly caused injury or loss to you. 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 meet 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 conform to the highest standards of medical professionalism. If a doctor does not meet the standards, and the failure results in an injury and/or medical malpractice, then negligence can occur. Expert testimony from medical professionals who have similar training, certifications or experience can help determine the quality of care in any given situation. State and federal laws, along with institute policies, help define what doctors are required to do for certain types of patients.

To win a malpractice case the case must be proved that the doctor breached his or their duty of care, and that the breach was a direct cause of injury. In legal terms, this is known as the causation component, and it is crucial that it is established. For example, if a broken arm requires an x-ray, the doctor must place the arm and put 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 could have occurred.

Causation

Legal malpractice claims founded on the evidence that the attorney made errors that resulted in financial losses to the client. For example when a lawyer fails to 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's important to recognize that not all mistakes by attorneys constitute malpractice. Errors involving strategy and planning are not generally considered to be malpractice, and attorneys have a lot of latitude to make judgement calls so long as they are reasonable.

The law also gives attorneys considerable leeway to fail to conduct a discovery process on a client's behalf, as provided that the decision was not unreasonable or negligent. Failure to uncover important facts or documents like medical or witness statements, is a potential example of legal malpractice. Other examples of malpractice are a failure to add certain defendants or claims, such as forgetting to submit a survival count in a wrongful death case, or the repeated and extended inability to communicate with a client.

It's also important to note that it must be proven that if it weren't for the lawyer's negligence, the plaintiff would have won the underlying case. The plaintiff's claim for malpractice is deemed invalid when it isn't proven. This makes the process of bringing legal malpractice lawsuits difficult. It is important to employ an experienced attorney.

Damages

A plaintiff must demonstrate that the lawyer's actions led to actual financial losses in order to prevail in a legal malpractice lawsuit. In a lawsuit, this needs to be proved with evidence, like expert testimony or correspondence between the attorney and client. The plaintiff must also show that a reasonable lawyer could have prevented the harm caused by the negligence of the lawyer. This is called proximate causation.

The causes of malpractice vary. Some of the most common mistakes are: failing to meet an expiration date or statute of limitations; failing to perform the necessary conflict checks on cases; applying law improperly to a client's specific circumstances; and violating an obligation of fiduciary (i.e. commingling trust account funds with an attorney's personal accounts) and mishandling the case, or failing to communicate with the client.

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

In many legal malpractice cases there are lawsuits for punitive as well as compensatory damages. The former compensates the victim for losses caused by the negligence of an attorney, while the latter is intended to discourage future malpractice by the defendant.