Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys are bound by a fiduciary obligation to their clients, and are required to act with a degree of diligence, skill and care. However, like all professionals, attorneys make mistakes.

There are many mistakes made by lawyers are legal malpractice. To establish legal malpractice, the aggrieved party has to prove that there was breach of duty, causation, breach and damages. Let's look at each of these elements.

Duty

Medical professionals and doctors swear to use their education and expertise to treat patients and not to cause further harm. A patient's legal right to compensation for injuries suffered from medical malpractice is based on the concept of the duty of care. Your attorney can help you determine if the actions of your doctor violated this duty of care, and whether the breach caused injuries or illness to you.

Your lawyer must prove that the medical professional was bound by the fiduciary obligation to act with reasonable competence and care. This can be demonstrated through eyewitness testimony, doctor-patient records, and expert testimony of doctors who have similar education, experience, and training.

Your lawyer will also have to establish that the medical professional violated their duty of caring by failing to adhere to the accepted standards of their area of expertise. This is commonly described as negligence. Your attorney will compare the actions of the defendant to what a reasonable individual would do in a similar situation.

Your lawyer must also show that the breach by the defendant led directly to your loss or injury. This is known as causation. Your attorney will use evidence including your doctor's or patient records, witness testimony and malpractice lawsuits expert testimony to prove that the defendant’s failure to comply with the standard of care was the primary cause of the injury or loss to you.

Breach

A doctor is responsible for the duties of care that are consistent with professional medical standards. If a doctor doesn't meet the standards, and the result is an injury and/or medical malpractice, then negligence can occur. Typically expert testimony from medical professionals who have similar training, expertise and experience, as well as certifications and certificates will help determine what the standard of care is in a particular situation. Federal and state laws, as well as policies of the institute, help define what doctors are required to do for certain kinds of patients.

To prevail in a malpractice case the case must be proved that the doctor violated his or their duty of care, and that this breach was a direct cause of an injury. This is known in legal terms as the causation element and it is imperative to prove it. For instance an injured arm requires an x-ray, the doctor must properly set the arm and place it in a cast for proper healing. If the physician failed to perform this task and the patient suffered an unavoidable loss of use of that arm, then malpractice may have occurred.

Causation

Attorney malpractice claims rely on evidence that shows the attorney's mistakes resulted in financial losses for the client. For instance, if a lawyer fails to file an action within the timeframe of limitations, resulting in the case being lost forever the person who was injured could bring legal malpractice lawsuits.

It is important to understand that not all errors made by attorneys constitute illegal. Planning and strategy errors are not typically considered to be malpractice. Attorneys have a broad choice of discretion when it comes to making decisions as long as they're rational.

The law also grants attorneys the right to refuse to conduct discovery on behalf of their clients, so long as the error was not unreasonable or negligence. Failure to uncover important documents or facts like medical reports or witness statements, is a potential example of legal malpractice attorney. Other examples of malpractice are the inability to add certain defendants or claims, such as forgetting a survival count for wrongful death cases or the inability to communicate with clients.

It is also important to consider the fact that the plaintiff must show that if it wasn't due to the lawyer's negligent behavior they would have prevailed. If not, the plaintiff's claims for malpractice will be rejected. This makes the process of bringing legal malpractice lawsuits difficult. This is why it's important to find an experienced attorney to represent you.

Damages

A plaintiff must prove that the attorney's actions have caused actual financial losses to win a legal malpractice lawsuit. In a lawsuit, this must 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 avoided the damage caused by the attorney's negligence. This is called proximate causation.

Malpractice can occur in many different ways. The most frequent errors include: not meeting a deadline or statute of limitations; failing to conduct an examination of a conflict on an instance; applying the law improperly to a client's particular situation; and breaking the fiduciary duty (i.e. commingling trust account funds with an attorney's personal accounts) and mishandling a case, and not communicating with clients.

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, the cost of equipment to aid in recovery and lost wages. Victims are also able to claim non-economic damages such as discomfort and pain and loss of enjoyment their lives, as well as emotional distress.

Legal malpractice cases usually involve claims for compensatory as well as punitive damages. The former is intended to compensate the victim for losses due to the negligence of the attorney and the latter is intended to discourage future malpractice by the defendant's side.