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Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys are bound by a fiduciary obligation to their clients, and they are expected act with skill, diligence and care. But, as with all professionals attorneys make mistakes.

Every mistake made by an attorney constitutes negligence. To establish legal malpractice, the aggrieved party must show that there was breach of duty, causation, breach and damages. Let's look at each of these components.

Duty

Doctors and medical professionals take the oath of using their skill and training to treat patients and not cause additional harm. The legal right of a patient to compensation for injuries suffered from medical malpractice hinges on the notion of duty of care. Your attorney will determine if your doctor's actions violated the duty of care and if the breach resulted in your injury or illness.

To prove a duty of care, your lawyer has to establish that a medical professional had an agreement with you, in which they were bound by a fiduciary duty to act with an acceptable level of skill and care. This can be proved by eyewitness testimony, doctor-patient records and expert testimony of doctors who have similar educational, experience and training.

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

Your lawyer must also demonstrate that the defendant's negligence led directly to your loss or injury. This is known as causation. Your attorney will use evidence, such as your doctor/patient documents, witness testimony and expert testimony, to show that the defendant’s failure to meet the standard of care was the primary cause of your injury or loss to you.

Breach

A doctor is bound by a duty of care for his patients that reflects professional medical standards. If a physician fails to adhere to these standards and that failure causes injury, then medical malpractice and negligence may occur. Expert witness testimony from medical professionals that have the same training, certifications and skills can help determine the standard of care in a given situation. State and federal laws as well as institute policies also determine what doctors should do for specific types of patients.

To win a malpractice claim it must be proved that the doctor acted in violation of his or her duty of care and that the violation was the direct cause of an injury. In legal terms, this is referred to as the causation component and it is essential that it is established. For instance in the event that a damaged arm requires an x-ray, the doctor has to properly set the arm and then place it in a cast for proper healing. If the doctor is unable to perform this, and the patient is left with a permanent loss of the use of their arm, malpractice may be at play.

Causation

Attorney malpractice claims are based on evidence that the attorney's mistakes caused financial losses to the client. For example, if a lawyer does not file a lawsuit within the statute of limitations, resulting in the case being lost for ever the person who was injured could bring legal malpractice lawsuits.

However, it's crucial to be aware that not all mistakes made by lawyers constitute mistakes that constitute malpractice. Strategies and mistakes aren't usually considered to be a violation of the law attorneys are given lots of freedom to make decisions based on their judgments as long as they're reasonable.

The law also gives attorneys ample discretion to refrain from performing discovery on behalf of a client provided that the decision was not arbitrary or a case of negligence. Legal malpractice can be committed by failing to discover important documents or information, such as medical reports or witness statements. Other examples of malpractice are the inability to add certain defendants or claims, such as forgetting a survival count for an unjustly-dead case or the inability to communicate with clients.

It is also important to remember that it must be proved that if it weren't the lawyer's negligence, the plaintiff would have won the case. In the event that it is not, the plaintiff's claim for malpractice will be rejected. This makes the process of bringing legal malpractice lawsuits difficult. For this reason, it's important to choose a seasoned attorney to represent you.

Damages

In order to prevail in a legal malpractice lawsuit, the plaintiff must prove actual financial losses incurred by an attorney's actions. This must be shown in a lawsuit by utilizing evidence such as expert testimony, correspondence between the client and attorney or billing records, and other documentation. In addition the plaintiff must demonstrate that a reasonable lawyer would have prevented the harm caused by the attorney's negligence. This is known as proximate cause.

Malpractice can occur in many different ways. Some of the most common types of malpractice include: failing to adhere to a deadline, which includes the statute of limitations, a failure to perform a conflict check or other due diligence on a case, improperly applying law to a client's circumstance, breaching a fiduciary duty (i.e. mixing trust account funds with personal attorney accounts), mishandling of a case, and not communicating with a client.

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

Legal malpractice cases often involve claims for compensatory as well as punitive damages. The former compensates victims for malpractice Lawsuits losses caused by the negligence of the attorney, whereas the latter is designed to deter any future malpractice committed by the defendant.