• 목록
• 답변
• 글쓰기
• 게시판 리스트 옵션
  • 수정
  • 삭제

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. But, as with all professionals attorneys make mistakes.

The mistakes made by lawyers are considered to be malpractice. To prove legal negligence the victim must demonstrate duty, breach of duty, causation, and damage. Let's examine each of these elements.

Duty

Medical professionals and doctors swear to use their education and experience to help patients and not cause further harm. A patient's legal right to be compensated for injuries sustained from medical malpractice is based on the concept of the duty of care. Your attorney can determine if the actions of your doctor breached the duty of medical care and if the breach caused you injury or illness.

To prove a duty to care, your lawyer has to show that a medical professional has a legal relationship with you and were bound by a fiduciary duty to perform their duties with reasonable competence and care. Establishing that this relationship existed may require evidence, such as your doctor-patient records or eyewitness testimony, as well as expert testimony from doctors who have similar experience, education and training.

Your lawyer must also prove that the medical professional breached their duty of care by not submitting to the accepted standards of care in their field. This is commonly referred to by the term negligence. Your lawyer will evaluate what the defendant did with what a reasonable individual would do in a similar situation.

Your lawyer must also demonstrate that the defendant's breach directly contributed to your injury or loss. This is referred to as causation, and your attorney will rely on evidence like your medical reports, witness statements and expert testimony to show that the defendant's failure to live up to the standards of care in your case was the 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 does not live up to those standards and fails to do so results in injury, medical malpractice or negligence could occur. Expert witness testimony from medical professionals that have similar training, certifications as well as experience and qualifications can help determine the quality of care in a particular situation. State and federal laws and institute policies also define what doctors must provide for specific kinds of patients.

In order to win a malpractice claim, it must be proven that the doctor acted in violation of his or her duty to care and that the violation was the sole cause of an injury. In legal terms, this is known as the causation element and it is crucial to establish. For example an injured arm requires an xray the doctor must properly set the arm and then place it in a cast to ensure proper healing. If the doctor fails to perform this, and the patient is left with a permanent loss of usage of the arm, malpractice could have taken place.

Causation

Lawyer malpractice claims are founded on the evidence that the attorney made errors that resulted in financial losses to the client. For example, if a lawyer fails to file a lawsuit within the prescribed time of limitations, leading to the case being lost forever the person who was injured can file legal malpractice claims.

It is important to recognize that not all errors made by lawyers are a sign of mistakes that constitute malpractice. The mistakes that involve strategy and planning aren't usually considered to be a violation of the law and lawyers have plenty of discretion in making judgment calls so long as they're reasonable.

The law also allows lawyers ample discretion to refrain from performing discovery on behalf of a client in the event that the decision was not arbitrary or negligence. Inability to find important facts or documents, such as witness statements or medical reports, is a potential example of legal malpractice. Other examples of malpractice are a inability to include certain defendants or claims for example, like forgetting to file a survival count in a case of wrongful death or the consistent and prolonged inability to contact a client.

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

Damages

To prevail in a legal malpractice attorney case, plaintiffs must show financial losses that result from the actions of the attorney. This must be shown in a lawsuit with evidence like expert testimony, correspondence between client and attorney along with billing records and other documentation. The plaintiff must also show that a reasonable attorney would have prevented the harm caused by the lawyer's negligence. This is called proximate causation.

It can happen in many different ways. Some of the more common types of malpractice include the failure to meet a deadline, for example, a statute of limitations, failure to conduct a conflict check or any other due diligence on a case, improperly applying the law to the client's situation and breaching a fiduciary responsibility (i.e. commingling trust account funds with attorney's personal accounts), mishandling of an instance, and not communicating with the client.

In the majority of medical malpractice cases the plaintiff is seeking compensatory damages. These compensate the victim for expenses out of pocket and losses, like hospital and medical bills, costs of equipment that aids in healing, as well as lost wages. In addition, victims can seek non-economic damages, such as suffering and suffering, loss of enjoyment of life and emotional distress.

In many legal malpractice cases there are cases for punitive and compensatory damages. The former is intended to compensate victims for losses caused by the attorney's negligence while the latter is designed to prevent future mistakes on the defendant's part.