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Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys have a fiduciary obligation with their clients and are required to conduct themselves with care, diligence and competence. But, as with all professionals, attorneys make mistakes.

Not every mistake made by an attorney can be considered legal malpractice. To prove negligence in a legal sense, the aggrieved must show duty, breach of obligation, causation, as well as damages. Let's look at each of these elements.

Duty

Medical professionals and doctors take the oath of using their knowledge and expertise to treat patients, and not causing further harm. A patient's legal right to receive compensation for injuries resulting from medical malpractice is based on the concept of the duty of care. Your lawyer can help determine whether or not your doctor's actions violated this duty of care, and whether these breaches resulted in injury or illness to you.

Your lawyer must establish that the medical professional was bound by the duty of a fiduciary to perform with reasonable skill and care. Establishing that this relationship existed could require evidence like your doctor-patient records eyewitness accounts and expert testimony from doctors with similar experiences, education and training.

Your lawyer will also have to prove that the medical professional breached their duty of care by not submitting to the standards of practice that are accepted in their area of expertise. This is often called negligence. Your attorney will evaluate the defendant's conduct to what a reasonable individual would perform in the same situation.

Finally, your lawyer must show that the defendant's breach of duty directly led to your loss or injury. This is called causation. Your lawyer will rely on evidence like your medical or patient reports, witness testimony and expert testimony, to show that the defendant’s failure to meet the standards of care was the direct reason for the loss or injury to you.

Breach

A doctor is obligated to patients to perform duties of care that conform to the standards of medical professional practice. If a doctor fails to meet the standards, and the result is an injury that is medically negligent, negligence could result. Expert witness testimony from medical professionals that possess similar qualifications, training or experience can help determine the standard of care for a specific situation. State and federal laws as well as institute policies also determine what doctors are required to do for certain types of patients.

In order to win a malpractice claim it is necessary to prove that the doctor violated his or their duty of care, and that this breach was a direct cause of injury. This is known in legal terms as the causation factor and it is essential to prove it. If a physician has to obtain an xray of a broken arm, they must put the arm in a cast and correctly set it. If the doctor fails to do this and the patient suffers a permanent loss in usage of the arm, malpractice could have occurred.

Causation

Attorney malpractice claims rely on the evidence that proves that the lawyer's mistakes resulted in financial losses for the client. Legal malpractice claims can be brought by the injured party if, for example, the attorney does not file the lawsuit within the timeframe of the statute of limitations and the case being lost forever.

It is crucial to realize that not all mistakes made by attorneys are malpractice. Strategies and planning errors aren't usually considered to be a sign of negligence. Attorneys have a broad range of discretion in making decisions so long as they're in the right place.

Likewise, the law gives attorneys the right to conduct discovery on behalf of the behalf of clients, so long as the action was not unreasonable or negligent. The failure to discover crucial documents or facts, such as medical reports or statements of witnesses can be a case of legal malpractice. Other examples of malpractice include a inability to include certain claims or defendants such as omitting to make a survival claim in a wrongful death case or the frequent and persistent inability to communicate with clients.

It's also important to note that it must be proved that, had it not been the negligence of the lawyer the plaintiff would have won the underlying case. If not, the plaintiff's claims for malpractice will be denied. This requirement makes bringing legal malpractice claims difficult. It is important to employ an experienced attorney.

Damages

A plaintiff must show that the attorney's actions have caused actual financial losses to prevail in a legal Malpractice Attorney suit. This must be shown in a lawsuit through evidence such as expert testimony, correspondence between the client and attorney, billing records and other records. In addition the plaintiff must show that a reasonable lawyer would have prevented the harm caused by the attorney's negligence. This is called proximate causation.

Malpractice occurs in many ways. Some of the most common types of malpractice include: failing to meet a deadline, for example, the statute of limitations, a failure to conduct a check on conflicts or other due diligence of a case, improperly applying the law to the client's situation or breaking a fiduciary duty (i.e. commingling trust account funds with personal attorney accounts) or mishandling the case, and failing to communicate with the client.

Medical malpractice suits typically involve claims for compensatory damages. They are awarded to the victim in exchange for the expenses out of pocket and losses, including hospital and medical bills, the cost of equipment that aids in recovery, and lost wages. Victims are also able to claim non-economic damages like pain and discomfort or loss of enjoyment in their lives, and emotional suffering.

In a lot of legal malpractice attorneys cases, there are cases for punitive and compensatory damages. The first compensates the victim for the damages caused by the negligence of the attorney while the latter is designed to discourage any future malpractice on the part of the defendant.