Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

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

A mistake made by an attorney can be considered an act of malpractice. To prove negligence in a legal sense the aggrieved party must prove duty, breach of obligation, causation, as well as damage. Let's look at each of these aspects.

Duty

Doctors and other medical professionals swear to use their training and experience to treat patients and not cause further harm. The duty of care is the foundation for patients' right to compensation in the event of injury due to medical negligence. Your attorney will determine if the actions of your doctor breached the duty of care and if these breaches caused injury or illness.

To establish a duty of care, your lawyer will need to demonstrate that a medical professional has an official relationship with you in which they had a fiduciary obligation to exercise a reasonable level of competence and care. This relationship may be proven by eyewitness testimony, physician-patient documents and expert testimony from doctors with similar educational, experience and training.

Your lawyer must also prove that the medical professional breached their duty of care by not submitting to the standards of practice that are accepted in their field. This is typically described as negligence. Your attorney will compare the actions of the defendant to what a reasonable person would do in the same situation.

Your lawyer must also demonstrate that the breach by the defendant directly caused your injury or loss. This is known as causation. Your lawyer will use evidence like your doctor or patient records, witness testimony and expert testimony to prove that the defendant’s failure to comply with the standard of care was the main cause of the injury or loss to you.

Breach

A doctor has a responsibility of care to his patients that conforms to the highest standards of medical practice. If a physician fails to adhere to these standards and the resulting failure causes an injury and/or medical apache junction malpractice attorney, then negligence could occur. Typically expert testimony from medical professionals who have the same training, qualifications, certifications and experience will help determine what the appropriate standard of care is 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 win a malpractice claim the evidence must prove that the doctor did not fulfill his or her duty of take care of patients and that the breach was the primary cause of an injury. This is referred to in legal terms as the causation element and it is imperative to establish. For example when a broken arm requires an xray, the doctor should properly place the arm and put it in a cast to ensure proper healing. If the physician failed to complete the procedure and the patient suffered an irreparable loss of use of the arm, then malpractice could have occurred.

Causation

Legal malpractice claims are based on evidence that the attorney committed mistakes that caused financial losses for the client. For instance the lawyer does not file an action within the timeframe of limitations, which results in the case being lost forever, the injured party can bring legal clementon Malpractice law firm actions.

It's important to recognize that not all mistakes by attorneys are malpractice. Strategies and planning mistakes are not typically considered to be the definition of malpractice. Attorneys have a broad range of discretion in making decisions as long as they're reasonable.

The law also grants attorneys an enormous amount of discretion to not conduct discovery on behalf of clients provided that the reason for the delay was not unreasonable or a result of negligence. Inability to find important details or documents like medical reports or statements of witnesses could be a sign of legal malpractice. Other examples of malpractice are the inability to add certain defendants or claims, for instance not noticing a survival count in wrongful death cases or the recurrent failure to communicate with clients.

It's also important to note that it must be proved that if it weren't for the lawyer's negligence, the plaintiff would have won the underlying case. Otherwise, the plaintiff's claim for malpractice will be denied. This makes the process of bringing legal malpractice claims complicated. It's crucial to hire an experienced attorney.

Damages

To win a legal malpractice lawsuit, the plaintiff must show actual financial losses caused by the actions of the attorney. In a lawsuit, this needs to be demonstrated using evidence, like expert testimony or correspondence between the attorney and the client. A plaintiff must also demonstrate that a reasonable attorney could have prevented the damage caused by the negligence of the lawyer. This is known as proximate cause.

The definition of malpractice can be found in a variety of ways. The most frequent mistakes include: not meeting an expiration date or statute of limitations; not performing the necessary conflict checks on an instance; applying the law improperly to a client's circumstances; and breaching the fiduciary duty (i.e. the commingling of funds from a trust account with the attorney's own accounts as well as not communicating with the client are all examples of malpractice.

Medical malpractice suits typically involve claims for compensation damages. These damages compensate the victim for the cost of out-of-pocket expenses and expenses such as medical and hospitals bills, equipment costs to help recover and lost wages. Additionally, victims may seek non-economic damages, such as pain and suffering as well as loss of enjoyment life, and emotional stress.

In a lot of legal malpractice cases there are claims for punitive or compensatory damages. The former is intended to compensate the victim for losses caused by the negligence of the attorney while the latter is intended to discourage future malpractice on the defendant's part.