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Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

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

A mistake made by an attorney constitutes an act of malpractice. To prove negligence in a legal sense, the aggrieved must show the breach of duty, duty, causation and damages. Let's look at each of these elements.

Duty-Free

Medical professionals and doctors swear to use their training and skills to cure patients and not to cause harm to others. Duty of care is the foundation for patients' right to compensation if they are injured by medical negligence. Your lawyer can help determine if your doctor's actions breached this duty of care, and whether these breaches resulted in injury or illness to you.

Your lawyer must establish that the medical professional in question owed you the duty of a fiduciary to perform with reasonable skill and care. The proof of this relationship could require evidence like the records of your doctor and patient or eyewitness testimony, as well as experts from doctors with similar knowledge, experience, and education.

Your lawyer must also prove that the medical professional breached their duty of care by not submitting to the accepted standards of care in their area of expertise. This is often called negligence. Your attorney will compare the defendant's behavior with what a reasonable person would do in the same situation.

Your lawyer must also prove that the defendant's breach led directly to your injury or loss. This is referred to as causation. Your attorney will rely on evidence like your doctor-patient documents, witness statements and expert testimony to prove that the defendant's failure to uphold the standards of care in your case was a direct cause of your loss or injury.

Breach

A doctor has a responsibility of care for his patients that is in line with professional medical standards. If a doctor fails to meet these standards, and the resulting failure causes an injury or medical malpractice, then negligence may occur. Expert witness testimony from medical professionals that have similar training, certifications as well as experience and qualifications can help determine the quality of care for a specific situation. State and federal laws, as well as institute policies, determine what doctors are required to provide for specific types of patients.

To prevail in a malpractice lawsuit it is necessary to prove that the doctor breached his or duty of care and that the breach was a direct cause of injury. In legal terms, this is called the causation component, and it is essential to establish. If a doctor has to perform an x-ray on an injured arm, they must put the arm in a cast and correctly place it. If the doctor failed to do this and the patient suffered an unavoidable loss of use of that arm, then malpractice law firms may have occurred.

Causation

Attorney malpractice claims are based on evidence that the attorney's mistakes resulted in financial losses for the client. For instance 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 important to realize that not all mistakes made by attorneys constitute malpractice. Errors involving strategy and planning are not usually considered to be malpractice attorneys are given plenty of discretion to make judgment calls as long as they're reasonable.

Additionally, the law grants attorneys a wide range of options to refuse to conduct a discovery process on a client's behalf, as provided that the decision was not unreasonable or negligent. Inability to find important facts or documents, such as witness statements or medical reports can be a case of legal malpractice. Other instances of malpractice include the inability to add certain defendants or claims, such as the mistake of not remembering a survival number for an unjustly-dead case, or the repeated failure to communicate with clients.

It is also important to remember that it must be proved that, if not the negligence of the lawyer the plaintiff would have won the case. The plaintiff's claim of malpractice is rejected when it isn't proven. This requirement makes the process of bringing legal malpractice lawsuits difficult. This is why it's essential to choose an experienced attorney to represent you.

Damages

In order to prevail in a legal malpractice suit, the plaintiff must prove actual financial losses that result from an attorney's actions. This must be shown in a lawsuit with evidence such as expert testimony, correspondence between client and attorney as well as billing records and other documents. In addition the plaintiff has to prove that a reasonable lawyer would have prevented the damage caused by the attorney's negligence. This is known as proximate cause.

It can happen in many different ways. Some of the most common mistakes are: failing to meet a deadline or statute of limitations; not performing a conflict check on a case; applying the law incorrectly to a client's circumstances; and breaching the fiduciary obligation (i.e. the commingling of trust account funds with an attorney's personal accounts) and mishandling an instance, and failing to communicate with a client.

In most medical malpractice cases the plaintiff seeks compensatory damages. They are awarded to the victim in exchange for the out-of-pocket expenses and losses, for example hospital and medical bills, costs of equipment that aids in recovering, and lost wages. Victims can also seek non-economic damages, such as discomfort and pain, loss of enjoyment of their lives, as well as emotional suffering.

Legal malpractice cases typically include claims for compensatory and punitive damages. The former compensates the victim for losses resulting from the negligence of an attorney, while the latter is intended to deter future malpractice by the defendant.