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Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys have a fiduciary connection with their clients and are required to conduct themselves with diligence, care and expertise. Attorneys make mistakes just like any other professional.

A mistake made by an attorney can be considered an act of malpractice. To prove negligence in a legal sense the aggrieved party must prove the breach of duty, obligation, causation, as well as damages. Let's take a look at each of these aspects.

Duty-Free

Doctors and medical professionals take an oath that they will use their knowledge and expertise to treat patients and not causing further harm. A patient's legal right to compensation for injuries suffered due to medical malpractice is based on the concept of duty of care. Your attorney can determine if your doctor's actions violated the duty of care and if the breach caused injury or illness.

Your lawyer has to prove that the medical professional you hired owed a fiduciary duty to act with reasonable skill and malpractice lawsuits care. This relationship may be proven through eyewitness testimony, doctor-patient documents and expert testimony from doctors who have similar education, experience, and training.

Your lawyer must also demonstrate that the medical professional violated their duty of care by not adhering to the accepted standards of practice in their area of expertise. This is often called negligence. Your lawyer will evaluate the defendant's conduct with what a reasonable person would do in the same circumstance.

In addition, your lawyer must demonstrate that the defendant's breach of duty directly caused injury or loss to you. 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 inability to uphold the standard of care in your case was the direct cause of your loss or injury.

Breach

A doctor is bound by a duty of treatment to his patients that is in line with professional medical standards. If a doctor does not adhere to these standards and the failure causes injury, then medical malpractice and negligence could occur. Typically expert testimony from medical professionals with similar training, skills, certifications and experience will help determine what the standard of care should be in a particular case. State and federal laws as well as institute policies also define what doctors must do for certain types of patients.

To win a malpractice claim, it must be proven that the doctor did not fulfill his or her duty of care and that this violation was the sole cause of an injury. This is known in legal terms as the causation component and it is vital that it be established. For instance when a broken arm requires an xray the doctor must set the arm and place it in a cast to ensure proper healing. If the doctor failed to complete the procedure and the patient suffered an unavoidable loss of use of that arm, then malpractice could have occurred.

Causation

Attorney malpractice claims rely on the evidence that proves that the lawyer's errors caused financial losses to the client. For instance the lawyer does not file a lawsuit within the statute of limitations, which results in the case being lost forever and the victim could bring legal malpractice lawsuits.

It is important to understand that not all errors made by lawyers are considered to be malpractice. Strategies and planning errors aren't usually considered to be a sign of the definition of malpractice. Attorneys have a wide range of discretion to make decisions as long as they're rational.

Likewise, the law gives attorneys considerable leeway to fail to conduct discovery on behalf of a client, so long as it was not unreasonable or negligent. Legal malpractice is committed by failing to discover important documents or facts, such as medical reports or witness statements. Other examples of malpractice are the failure to include certain defendants or claims, such as failing to include a survival count for a wrongful-death case or the constant failure to communicate with clients.

It is also important to consider the necessity for the plaintiff to demonstrate that, if it weren't for the lawyer's negligent conduct they could have won their case. The claim of malpractice by the plaintiff will be rejected when it isn't proven. This makes the process of bringing legal malpractice lawsuits difficult. For this reason, it's essential to choose an experienced attorney to represent you.

Damages

A plaintiff must prove that the lawyer's actions led to actual financial losses in order to win a legal malpractice suit. In a lawsuit, this must be proven with evidence like expert testimony or correspondence between the client and attorney. The plaintiff must also show that a reasonable lawyer could have prevented the damage caused by the negligence of the lawyer. This is referred to as proximate cause.

It can happen in many different ways. Some of the most common kinds of malpractice are failing to adhere to a deadline, which includes a statute of limitation, failure to conduct a conflict-check or other due diligence of the case, not applying law to a client's circumstance and breaching a fiduciary responsibility (i.e. merging funds from a trust account an attorney's account or handling a case in a wrong manner, and not communicating with the client are all examples of malpractice.

Medical malpractice suits typically involve claims for compensation damages. The compensations pay for out-of-pocket expenses as well as expenses like hospital and medical bills, the cost of equipment to aid in recovery and lost wages. In addition, the victims can seek non-economic damages, like pain and suffering or loss of enjoyment life, and emotional stress.

In many legal malpractice cases, there are cases for punitive and compensatory damages. The first compensates the victim for the damages caused by the attorney's negligence and the latter is intended to prevent future mistakes on the defendant's part.