Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys have a fiduciary obligation with their clients and are required to act with care, diligence and expertise. However, like all professionals, attorneys make mistakes.

A mistake made by an attorney constitutes malpractice. To prove legal malpractice, an victim must prove obligation, breach, causation and damages. Let's take a look at each one of these aspects.

Duty-Free

Medical professionals and doctors swear the oath of using their skill and training to treat patients, and not cause additional harm. The legal right of a patient to compensation for injuries sustained from medical malpractice hinges on the notion of the duty of care. Your lawyer can help determine whether or not your doctor's actions violated this duty of care, and if the breach caused injury or illness to you.

To prove a duty of care, your lawyer needs to demonstrate that a medical professional has an official relationship with you in which they were bound by a fiduciary duty to act with an acceptable level of skill and care. This can be demonstrated by eyewitness testimony of witnesses, doctor-patient documents and expert testimony from doctors who have similar education, experience and training.

Your lawyer must also demonstrate that the medical professional breached their duty of care by not submitting to the accepted standards of practice in their field. This is often called negligence. Your attorney will assess the conduct of the defendant with what a reasonable person would take in the same scenario.

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

Breach

A doctor is bound by a duty of care to his patients that reflects professional medical standards. If a physician fails to adhere to these standards and the failure causes injury, then negligence and medical malpractice might occur. Expert testimony from medical professionals who possess similar qualifications, training and skills can help determine the appropriate level of care in a given situation. Federal and state laws and institute policies can also be used to determine what doctors are required to do for specific types of patients.

To win a malpractice case the case must be proved that the doctor violated his or duty of care and that the breach was a direct cause of injury. This is known in legal terms as the causation element and it is vital that it is established. For example an injured arm requires an x-ray the doctor must set the arm and then place it in a cast to ensure proper healing. If the doctor was unable to complete the procedure and the patient was left with permanent loss of use of the arm, then malpractice could have occurred.

Causation

Attorney malpractice claims rely on evidence that shows the attorney's mistakes resulted in financial losses for the client. For example when a lawyer does not file a lawsuit within the prescribed time of limitations, resulting in the case being lost forever and malpractice the victim can bring legal malpractice actions.

It is important to recognize that not all errors made by attorneys are malpractice. The mistakes that involve strategy and planning do not typically constitute malpractice, and attorneys have plenty of discretion to make judgement calls so long as they're reasonable.

Likewise, the law gives attorneys a wide range of options to refuse to conduct discovery on behalf of a client's behalf, as in the event that it is not negligent or unreasonable. Inability to find important information or documents like medical or witness statements, is a potential example of legal malpractice. Other examples of malpractice lawyers include a failure to add certain claims or defendants, such as forgetting to include a survival count in a case of wrongful death, or the repeated and prolonged failure to communicate with clients.

It's also important that it must be proved that but the lawyer's negligence, the plaintiff would have won the case. If not, the plaintiff's claims for malpractice will be denied. This makes bringing legal malpractice claims difficult. For this reason, it's important to choose a seasoned attorney to represent you.

Damages

To prevail in a legal malpractice suit, a plaintiff must demonstrate actual financial losses incurred by an attorney's actions. In the case of a lawsuit this has to be demonstrated using evidence, such as expert testimony and correspondence between the attorney and the client. A plaintiff must also prove that a reasonable lawyer could have prevented the damage caused by the negligence of the lawyer. This is referred to as the proximate cause.

Malpractice can occur in many different ways. Some of the more common types of malpractice include failing to meet a deadline, including a statute of limitations, a failure to perform a conflict check or other due diligence on the case, not applying the law to a client's case or breaking a fiduciary duty (i.e. the commingling of funds from a trust account with an attorney's own accounts or handling a case improperly and failing to communicate with the client are all examples of malpractice.

Medical malpractice lawsuits typically include claims for compensation damages. The compensations pay for the cost of out-of-pocket expenses and losses, such as hospital and medical bills, costs of equipment to aid in recovery and lost wages. Victims may also claim non-economic damages like pain and discomfort, loss of enjoyment of their lives, as well as emotional distress.

Legal malpractice cases often include claims for compensatory and punitive damages. The former compensates a victim for the loss resulting from the negligence of the attorney, while the latter is designed to deter future malpractice by the defendant.