Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys have a fiduciary connection with their clients and are expected to conduct themselves with care, diligence and expertise. However, like all professionals attorneys make mistakes.

Not all mistakes made by lawyers are malpractice. To prove legal malpractice, an aggrieved party has to prove duty, breach, causation and damage. Let's review each of these elements.

Duty-Free

Medical professionals and doctors take an oath to use their knowledge and expertise to treat patients, not to cause further harm. Duty of care is the foundation for a patient's right to compensation for injuries caused by medical malpractice. Your attorney can determine if the actions of your doctor breached the duty of care and whether these violations caused you injury or illness.

Your lawyer has to prove that the medical professional owed you the duty of a fiduciary to perform with reasonable competence and care. Establishing that this relationship existed may require evidence such as the records of your doctor-patient or eyewitness evidence, or expert testimony from doctors who have similar knowledge, experience, and education.

Your lawyer will also have to prove that the medical professional violated their duty of care by not living up to the accepted standards of care in their field. This is often called negligence, and your attorney will compare the defendant's behavior to what a reasonable individual would take in the same scenario.

Your lawyer must also show that the breach of the defendant's duty caused direct loss or injury. This is referred to as causation, and your attorney will rely on evidence like your medical documents, witness statements and expert testimony to demonstrate that the defendant's failure to live up to the standards of care in your case was a direct cause of your loss or injury.

Breach

A doctor owes patients duties of care that reflect the highest standards of medical professionalism. If a physician fails to adhere to these standards and the resulting failure causes an injury and/or medical malpractice, then negligence can occur. Typically expert testimony from medical professionals who have similar training, expertise and certifications will help determine what the standard of medical care should be in a particular circumstance. Federal and state laws, as well as guidelines from the institute, help determine what doctors are required to provide for specific types of patients.

To prevail in a malpractice lawsuit it must be proved that the doctor breached his or her duty of care and that this violation was the primary cause of an injury. This is known in legal terms as the causation element and it is essential that it be established. If a doctor needs to perform an x-ray on a broken arm, they must place the arm in a cast and then correctly place it. If the doctor is unable to perform this, and the patient is left with a permanent loss of the use of their arm, then malpractice may have occurred.

Causation

Attorney malpractice claims are founded on the evidence that the attorney committed mistakes that resulted in financial losses for the client. Legal malpractice claims may be brought by the person who was injured if, for example, the attorney does not file the lawsuit within the statutes of limitations, which results in the case being thrown out forever.

It is important to understand that not all errors made by lawyers are a sign of malpractice. Errors involving strategy and planning are not generally considered to be malpractice and lawyers have plenty of discretion to make judgment calls as long as they are reasonable.

The law also allows lawyers the right to refuse to conduct discovery on behalf of clients in the event that the failure was not unreasonable or negligence. The failure to discover crucial details or documents, such as medical reports or witness statements or medical reports, could be an instance of legal malpractice. Other instances of malpractice include the failure to include certain defendants or claims, such as the mistake of not remembering a survival number for the case of wrongful death or the recurrent failure to communicate with clients.

It is also important to remember the fact that the plaintiff must show that if it wasn't the lawyer's negligence they could have won their case. The claim of malpractice by the plaintiff is deemed invalid if it is not proven. This makes it very difficult to file an action for legal malpractice. It's important to choose a seasoned attorney to represent you.

Damages

A plaintiff must prove that the attorney's actions caused actual financial losses to prevail in a legal malpractice suit. This can be proven in a lawsuit through evidence like expert testimony, correspondence between client and attorney as well as billing records and other records. In addition, the plaintiff must prove that a reasonable lawyer could have avoided the harm that was caused by the attorney's negligence. This is called proximate causation.

Malpractice occurs in many ways. The most frequent types of malpractice include the failure to adhere to a deadline, which includes a statute of limitations, failure to conduct a check on conflicts or other due diligence on a case, improperly applying law to a client's situation or breaching a fiduciary obligation (i.e. mixing trust account funds with attorney's personal accounts) or mishandling the case, and not communicating with a client.

Medical utah malpractice lawsuit lawsuits typically include claims for compensation damages. The compensations pay for out-of-pocket expenses as well as expenses such as medical and hospitals bills, the cost of equipment to aid in recovery, and lost wages. Victims are also able to claim non-economic damages such as discomfort and pain as well as loss of enjoyment from their lives, as well as emotional suffering.

In many legal malpractice cases there are cases for punitive and compensatory damages. The former compensates the victim for losses caused by the attorney's negligence while the latter is meant to discourage future malpractice on the defendant's part.