Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

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

Not all errors made by attorneys are a result of malpractice. To prove negligence in a legal sense the victim must demonstrate the breach of duty, duty, causation, and damage. Let's review each of these elements.

Duty-Free

Medical professionals and doctors swear to use their education and skills to cure patients and not to cause further harm. The legal right of a patient to compensation for injuries suffered from medical malpractice is based on the concept of duty of care. Your lawyer can help determine if your doctor's actions violated this duty of care, and whether those breaches caused injuries or illness to you.

To prove a duty of care, your lawyer will need to prove that a medical professional had an agreement with you in which they owed you a fiduciary responsibility to perform their duties with an acceptable level of competence and care. This relationship can be established by eyewitness testimony, doctor-patient records, and expert testimony of doctors who have similar education, experience, and training.

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

Your lawyer will also need to prove that the defendant's breach led directly to your loss or injury. This is referred to as causation. Your lawyer will rely on evidence, such as your doctor/patient documents, witness testimony and expert testimony to prove that the defendant's failure to adhere to the standard of care was the main cause of injury or loss to you.

Breach

A doctor is bound by a duty of care to his patients that is in line with professional medical standards. If a doctor does not meet those standards, and the resulting failure causes an injury, then medical malpractice or negligence may occur. Expert witness testimony from medical professionals that possess similar qualifications, training as well as experience and qualifications can help determine the level of care for a specific situation. State and federal laws and institute policies can also be used to define what doctors must do for certain types of patients.

To prevail in a malpractice lawsuit it must be proven that the doctor breached his or their duty of care, and that this breach was the direct cause of injury. This is known in legal terms as the causation element, and it is vital to prove it. If a physician has to conduct an x-ray examination of a broken arm, they must place the arm in a cast and then correctly place it. If the doctor fails to do this and the patient is left with a permanent loss of the use of their arm, then malpractice may have occurred.

Causation

Attorney malpractice attorney claims are founded on the evidence that the attorney made mistakes that caused financial losses for the client. For example when a lawyer fails to file an action within the timeframe of limitations, which results in the case being lost forever, the injured party could bring legal malpractice lawsuits.

It is crucial to realize that not all mistakes by attorneys are malpractice. The mistakes that involve strategy and planning are not generally considered to be malpractice and lawyers have plenty of discretion to make judgement calls so long as they're reasonable.

The law also gives attorneys the right to refuse to conduct discovery on behalf of a client, so long as the decision was not arbitrary or a case of negligence. Failing to discover important documents or facts, such as medical reports or witness statements, is a potential example of legal malpractice. Other instances of malpractice could be a inability to include certain claims or defendants, such as forgetting to make a survival claim in a wrongful-death case or the consistent and long-running failure to contact clients.

It's also important that it must be proven that but for the lawyer's negligence, the plaintiff would have won the underlying case. If not, the plaintiff's claims for malpractice will be rejected. This requirement makes the process of bringing legal malpractice lawsuits difficult. It's important to choose a seasoned attorney to represent you.

Damages

To win a legal malpractice lawsuit a plaintiff must demonstrate actual financial losses that result from the actions of an attorney. In a lawsuit, this needs to be proved with evidence, like expert testimony or correspondence between the attorney and client. A plaintiff must also demonstrate that a reasonable attorney would have prevented the harm caused by the lawyer's negligence. This is known as the proximate cause.

Malpractice can occur in many different ways. The most frequent malpractices include: failing the deadline or statute of limitations; not performing an examination of a conflict on a case; applying the law incorrectly to a client's circumstances; and breaching a fiduciary obligation (i.e. commingling trust account funds with personal attorney accounts), mishandling of the case, and not communicating with clients.

In the majority of medical malpractice attorneys cases the plaintiff will seek compensatory damages. These damages compensate the victim for out-of-pocket expenses as well as expenses like medical and hospitals bills, equipment costs to aid recovery, and lost wages. Victims can also seek non-economic damages like discomfort and pain, loss of enjoyment of their lives, and emotional suffering.

In many legal malpractice cases there are claims for punitive and compensatory damages. The former compensates a victim for losses resulting from the negligence of the attorney, whereas the latter is intended to deter any future malpractice committed by the defendant.