Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys are bound by a fiduciary obligation to their clients and are required to act with skill, diligence and care. However, just like any other professional, attorneys make mistakes.

Not every mistake made by an attorney is an act of malpractice. To prove legal negligence the victim must demonstrate the breach of duty, duty, causation, and damages. Let's review each of these aspects.

Duty

Doctors and other medical professionals swear to use their training and skills to cure patients and not cause harm to others. Duty of care is the foundation for a patient's right to compensation when they suffer injuries due to medical malpractice. Your attorney will determine if your doctor's actions violated the duty of care and if the breach resulted in your injury or illness.

Your lawyer must establish that the medical professional was bound by the duty of a fiduciary to perform with reasonable competence and care. To prove that the relationship existed, you could require evidence like the records of your doctor-patient or eyewitness testimony, as well as experts from doctors with similar experience, education and training.

Your lawyer must also show that the medical professional violated their duty of care by not living up to the accepted standards of care in their area of expertise. This is often described as negligence. Your lawyer will be able to compare what the defendant did with what a reasonable person would do in a similar situation.

Your lawyer must also prove that the breach of the defendant's duty directly contributed to your injury or loss. This is referred to as causation. Your lawyer will make use of evidence such as your doctor-patient reports, witness statements and expert testimony to show that the defendant's inability to uphold the standards of care in your case was a direct cause of your loss or injury.

Breach

A doctor is obligated to patients to perform duties of care that reflect professional standards in medical practice. If a doctor fails adhere to these standards and fails to do so results in injury, medical malpractice and negligence may occur. Typically, expert testimony from medical professionals with similar qualifications, training or certifications will help determine what the standard of treatment should be in a particular circumstance. State and federal laws as well as institute policies also define what doctors must do for specific types of patients.

To be successful in a malpractice case, it must be proven that the doctor breached his or her duty of care and that the breach was the primary cause of an injury. In legal terms, this is referred to as the causation component and it is crucial that it is established. If a doctor is required to conduct an x-ray examination of an injured arm, they must place the arm in a casting and correctly place it. If the doctor was unable to complete the procedure and the patient was left with a permanent loss of use of the arm, then malpractice may have occurred.

Causation

Attorney malpractice claims are based on evidence that the attorney's errors resulted in financial losses for the client. For example, if a lawyer fails to file a lawsuit within the prescribed time of limitations, resulting in the case being lost for ever the party who suffered damages could bring legal malpractice lawsuits.

It's important to recognize that not all errors made by attorneys constitute malpractice. Errors involving strategy and planning aren't usually considered to be a violation of the law and lawyers have lots of freedom in making judgment calls so long as they are reasonable.

In addition, the law allows attorneys considerable leeway to fail to conduct a discovery process on the behalf of their clients, as long as it was not unreasonable or negligent. Failing to discover important details or documents, such as witness statements or medical reports, is a potential example of legal malpractice. Other examples of malpractice are a failure to add certain claims or defendants, such as forgetting to submit a survival count in a case of wrongful death or the continual and prolonged inability to communicate with clients.

It's also important to keep in mind that it must be established that but the negligence of the lawyer, the plaintiff would have won the underlying case. The plaintiff's claim for malpractice is rejected if it is not proven. This requirement makes the process of bringing legal malpractice lawsuits difficult. For this reason, it's important to find an experienced attorney to represent you.

Damages

A plaintiff must show that the attorney's actions caused actual financial losses in order to win a legal malpractice lawsuit. In the case of a lawsuit this has to be proven with evidence such as expert testimony and correspondence between the client and attorney. In addition, the plaintiff must prove that a reasonable lawyer would have prevented the harm that was caused by the negligence of the attorney. This is referred to as the proximate cause.

It can happen in a variety of ways. Some of the most common malpractices include: failing an expiration date or statute of limitations; failing to conduct a conflict check on an instance; applying the law in a way that is not appropriate to the client's circumstances; and breaching the fiduciary duty (i.e. commingling trust account funds with an attorney's personal accounts), mishandling of a case, and not communicating with clients.

Medical malpractice lawsuits [http://45.4.175.178/bbs/board.Php?bo_table=mainboard&wr_id=8382654] typically include claims for compensation damages. These compensations compensate the victim for out-of-pocket expenses as well as losses, such as hospital and medical bills, costs of equipment to aid in recovery, and lost wages. In addition, the victims can claim non-economic damages, such as pain and suffering as well as loss of enjoyment life, and emotional distress.

In many legal malpractice cases there are claims for punitive or compensatory damages. The former compensates a victim for the loss resulting from the negligence of the attorney, while the latter is intended to discourage future misconduct by the defendant.