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Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys are bound by a fiduciary obligation to their clients and they are expected act with a high degree of skill, diligence and care. Attorneys make mistakes, just like every other professional.

Not all mistakes made by lawyers are a result of malpractice. To establish legal malpractice, the aggrieved person must demonstrate that there was breach of duty, causation, breach and damages. Let's look at each of these elements.

Duty-Free

Medical professionals and doctors swear to apply their education and skills to cure patients and not to cause further harm. Duty of care is the foundation 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 these breaches resulted in injury or illness to you.

To prove a duty of care, your lawyer will need to show that a medical professional had a legal relationship with you and had a fiduciary obligation to exercise an acceptable level of competence and care. This can be proved through eyewitness testimony, doctor-patient documents and expert testimony from doctors who have similar education, experience, and training.

Your lawyer will also need to show that the medical professional violated their duty of caring by failing to adhere to the accepted standards in their field. This is often described as negligence. Your attorney will compare the actions of the defendant to what a reasonable person would do in a similar situation.

Then, your lawyer has to show that the defendant's breach of duty directly caused your loss or injury. This is referred to as causation. Your attorney will use evidence like your doctor-patient reports, witness statements and expert testimony to show that the defendant's inability to live up to the standard of care in your case was the direct cause of your loss or injury.

Breach

A doctor owes patients duties of care that adhere to the highest standards of medical professionalism. If a physician fails to meet those standards, and the resulting failure causes an injury, then medical malpractice or negligence could result. Expert testimony from medical professionals who have similar training, certifications or experience can help determine the standard of care in any given situation. Federal and state laws and institute policies can also be used to determine what doctors should do for certain types of patients.

To prevail in a malpractice lawsuit the case must be proved that the doctor violated his or her duty of care and that the breach was the direct cause of injury. This is known in legal terms as the causation element, and it is imperative to establish. For instance in the event that a damaged arm requires an xray the doctor should properly set the arm and then place it in a cast to ensure proper healing. If the physician failed to do this and the patient was left with an irreparable loss of function of that arm, then malpractice may have occurred.

Causation

Legal malpractice claims are based on evidence that a lawyer made mistakes that caused financial losses to the client. For instance the lawyer fails to file an action within the timeframe of limitations, which results in the case being lost forever and the victim could bring legal malpractice lawsuits.

It is important to recognize that not all mistakes made by attorneys are mistakes that constitute malpractice. Errors involving strategy and planning are not generally considered to be malpractice attorneys have plenty of discretion to make judgement calls so long as they're reasonable.

The law also gives attorneys a lot of discretion to perform discovery on the behalf of their clients, as long as the action was not unreasonable or negligent. Legal malpractice is committed by not obtaining crucial documents or evidence, such as medical reports or witness statements. Other examples of malpractice are a inability to include certain claims or defendants for example, like forgetting to submit a survival count in a wrongful-death case or the frequent and persistent inability to contact clients.

It's also important to keep in mind that it must be proved that, had it not been for the lawyer's negligence, the plaintiff would have won the underlying case. In the event that it is not, the plaintiff's claim for malpractice will be rejected. This requirement makes the process of bringing legal malpractice lawsuits difficult. It's crucial to hire an experienced attorney.

Damages

A plaintiff must show that the attorney's actions resulted in actual financial losses to prevail in a legal malpractice lawsuit. This can be proven in a lawsuit using evidence like expert testimony, correspondence between the client and attorney or billing records, and other documents. The plaintiff must also show that a reasonable attorney could have prevented the damage caused by the lawyer's negligence. This is referred to as the proximate cause.

It can happen in many different ways. Some of the most common kinds of malpractice lawyer are failing to meet a deadline, including a statute of limitation, failure to perform a conflict check or other due diligence check on the case, not applying law to a client's circumstance, breaching a fiduciary duty (i.e. mixing trust funds with an attorney's personal accounts), mishandling of an instance, and not communicating with clients.

In the majority of medical malpractice cases the plaintiff is seeking compensation damages. These compensate the victim for the out-of-pocket expenses and losses, like medical and hospital bills, costs of equipment required to aid in healing, as well as lost wages. In addition, victims may seek non-economic damages, like suffering and suffering and loss of enjoyment of life, and emotional stress.

In a lot of legal malpractice cases there are claims for punitive and compensatory damages. The former compensates the victim for the loss resulting from the negligence of an attorney, while the latter is intended to discourage future misconduct by the defendant.