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Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

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

Not every mistake made by an attorney is an act of malpractice law firms. To prove negligence in a legal sense the person who was hurt must prove the duty, breach of duty, malpractice lawsuits causation, and damage. Let's take a look at each one of these aspects.

Duty

Medical professionals and doctors swear to use their training and experience to treat patients and not cause further harm. A patient's legal right to receive compensation for injuries resulting due to medical malpractice is based on the concept of the duty of care. Your attorney will determine if the actions of your doctor breached the duty of care and if the breach resulted in your injury or illness.

Your lawyer must demonstrate that the medical professional in question owed you a fiduciary duty to act with reasonable competence and care. This relationship can be established by eyewitness testimony, doctor-patient records and expert testimony of doctors with similar educational, experience and training.

Your lawyer will also need to show that the medical professional violated their duty of caring by failing to follow the accepted standards of their area of expertise. This is commonly known as negligence. Your lawyer will evaluate what the defendant did to what a reasonable person would do in the same situation.

Then, your lawyer has to prove that the defendant's lapse of duty directly resulted in the loss or injury you suffered. This is called causation. Your lawyer will rely on evidence, such as your doctor/patient records, witness testimony, and expert testimony to prove that the defendant's failure to meet the standard of care was the direct reason for the loss or injury to you.

Breach

A doctor is required to perform a duty of care for his patients that reflects professional medical standards. If a doctor does not meet these standards and fails to do so causes injury, then medical malpractice and negligence could occur. Typically, expert testimony from medical professionals with similar training, skills and certifications will help determine what the appropriate standard of care is in a specific situation. State and federal laws and institute policies can also be used to determine what doctors should provide for specific kinds of patients.

In order to win a malpractice claim it must be proven that the doctor violated his or his duty of care and that the breach was a direct cause of injury. In legal terms, this is called the causation element and it is crucial to establish. For instance when a broken arm requires an xray the doctor must properly set the arm and then place it in a cast for proper healing. If the doctor fails to complete this task and the patient is left with a permanent loss of the use of their arm, malpractice may have taken place.

Causation

Legal malpractice claims are based on evidence that a lawyer made mistakes that caused financial losses to the client. For instance, if a lawyer does not file an action within the timeframe of limitations, leading to the case being lost forever and the victim could bring legal malpractice lawsuits.

It is crucial to be aware that not all errors made by attorneys are malpractice. The mistakes that involve strategy and planning do not typically constitute malpractice, and attorneys have the ability to make decisions based on their judgments as long as they are reasonable.

The law also grants attorneys considerable latitude to not perform discovery for a client, so long as the decision was not arbitrary or negligent. Failing to discover important documents or facts like witness statements or medical reports could be a sign of legal malpractice. Other instances of malpractice include the failure to include certain defendants or claims, like failing to include a survival count for a wrongful-death case or the recurrent failure to communicate with clients.

It is also important to remember the necessity for the plaintiff to show that if it wasn't for the lawyer's careless conduct, they would have prevailed. Otherwise, the plaintiff's claim for malpractice will be denied. This requirement 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 win a legal malpractice lawsuit. In the case of a lawsuit this has to be proven with evidence such as expert testimony and correspondence between the attorney and the client. A plaintiff must also prove that a reasonable lawyer could have prevented the harm caused by the negligence of the lawyer. This is known as proximate cause.

The act of malpractice can be triggered in a variety of different ways. Some of the most common malpractices include: failing the deadline or statute of limitations; failing to conduct an examination of a conflict on cases; applying law in a way that is not appropriate to the client's particular situation; and breaking the fiduciary duty (i.e. mixing trust account funds with personal attorney accounts) and mishandling a case, and failing to communicate with a client.

In the majority of medical malpractice cases the plaintiff will seek compensation damages. They are awarded to the victim in exchange for the out-of-pocket expenses and losses, for example hospital and medical bills, the cost of equipment that aids in recovery, and lost wages. Additionally, victims may seek non-economic damages, like pain and suffering as well as loss of enjoyment life and emotional suffering.

In a lot of legal malpractice cases there are lawsuits for punitive as well as compensatory damages. The former is intended to compensate victims for losses due to the negligence of the attorney while the latter is designed to discourage any future malpractice on the part of the defendant.