Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys are required to fulfill a fiduciary responsibility to their clients and they must act with a degree of diligence, skill and care. Attorneys make mistakes, as do other professional.

Every mistake made by an attorney can be considered legal malpractice. To prove legal malpractice, an aggrieved party has to prove that there was breach of duty, causation, breach and damages. Let's take a look at each one of these aspects.

Duty

Medical professionals and doctors swear to use their training and experience to help patients and not to cause further harm. Duty of care is the basis for patients' right to compensation in the event of injury due to medical malpractice. Your attorney can assist you determine if the actions of your doctor violated this duty of care, and if those breaches caused injury or illness to you.

To prove a duty to care, your lawyer must to prove that a medical professional had an official relationship with you, in which they have a fiduciary obligation to perform their duties with a reasonable level of expertise and care. Proving that this relationship existed could require evidence like your doctor-patient records, eyewitness statements and expert testimony from doctors with similar experience, education and training.

Your lawyer must also show that the medical professional violated their duty of care by not submitting to the standards of practice that are accepted in their field. This is usually referred to by the term negligence. Your lawyer will assess the actions of the defendant to what a reasonable individual would do in a similar situation.

Your lawyer must also demonstrate that the defendant's breach directly contributed to your injury or loss. This is known as causation. Your lawyer will make use of evidence like your doctor or patient documents, witness testimony and expert testimony, to prove that the defendant's failure meet the standards of care was the main cause of the injury or loss to you.

Breach

A doctor owes patients duties of care that conform to professional standards in medical practice. If a physician fails to meet those standards, and the failure results in an injury, then medical malpractice or negligence could occur. Typically expert testimony from medical professionals with similar qualifications, training and certifications will assist in determining what the minimum standard of care should be in a particular case. State and federal laws and institute policies also define what doctors must do for certain types of patients.

To win a malpractice claim the evidence must prove that the doctor acted in violation of his or her duty of care and that the breach was a direct reason for an injury. This is referred to in legal terms as the causation component and it is essential that it is established. For instance, if a broken arm requires an xray the doctor must fix the arm and place it in a cast for proper healing. If the doctor was unable to complete the procedure and the patient was left with permanent loss of use of that arm, then malpractice could have occurred.

Causation

Attorney malpractice claims rely on evidence that shows the attorney's errors resulted in financial losses for Malpractice Lawsuits the client. For example the lawyer does not file an action within the timeframe of limitations, resulting in the case being lost for malpractice lawsuits ever and the victim could bring legal malpractice lawsuits.

It is important to recognize that not all errors made by lawyers constitute mistakes that constitute malpractice. The mistakes that involve strategy and planning aren't usually considered to be a violation of the law attorneys have a lot of latitude to make decisions based on their judgments as long as they are reasonable.

The law also gives attorneys the right to conduct discovery on behalf of a client, so long as it was not unreasonable or negligent. Legal malpractice is committed by not obtaining crucial documents or evidence, such as medical reports or witness statements. Other examples of malpractice are the inability to add certain defendants or claims, like forgetting a survival count for the case of wrongful death, or the repeated failure to communicate with clients.

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

Damages

To win a legal malpractice lawsuit the plaintiff must show actual financial losses caused by an attorney's actions. This can be proven in a lawsuit by utilizing evidence like expert testimony, correspondence between the client and attorney as well as billing records and other evidence. A plaintiff must also demonstrate that a reasonable attorney could have prevented the harm caused by the lawyer's negligence. This is known as the proximate cause.

The act of malpractice can be triggered in a variety of different ways. Some of the most common errors include: not meeting the deadline or statute of limitations; failing to conduct an examination of a conflict on an instance; applying the law improperly to a client's circumstances; and breaching the fiduciary duty (i.e. the commingling of trust account funds with personal attorney accounts) or mishandling the case, or not communicating with clients.

Medical malpractice lawsuits typically involve claims for compensation damages. They are awarded to the victim in exchange for expenses out of pocket and losses, like medical and hospital bills, costs of equipment needed to aid in recovering, and lost wages. In addition, the victims can claim non-economic damages, like suffering and suffering as well as loss of enjoyment life and emotional suffering.

In a lot of legal malpractice cases there are lawsuits for punitive as well as compensatory damages. The former compensates a victim for the loss resulting from the negligence of an attorney, while the latter is intended to deter future malpractice by the defendant.