Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys hold a fiduciary relationship with their clients and are expected to conduct themselves with diligence, care and competence. However, like all professionals, attorneys make mistakes.

Every mistake made by an attorney constitutes legal malpractice. To prove negligence in a legal sense the victim must demonstrate the duty, breach of obligation, causation, and damage. Let's take a look at each one of these aspects.

Duty-Free

Doctors and other medical professionals swear to apply their education and expertise to treat patients and not to cause harm to others. The duty of care is the basis for the right of patients to receive compensation if they are injured by medical malpractice. Your attorney will determine if the actions of your doctor violated the duty of care and whether these violations caused injury or illness.

Your lawyer has to prove that the medical professional owed you the duty of a fiduciary to perform with reasonable competence and care. Proving that this relationship existed may require evidence, such as the records of your doctor and patient or eyewitness evidence, or experts from doctors with similar experience, education and training.

Your lawyer will also have to show that the medical professional breached their duty of care by failing to adhere to the accepted standards of their field. This is often referred to as negligence. Your attorney will evaluate the defendant's conduct to what a reasonable person would do in the same circumstance.

Your lawyer must also show that the breach by the defendant led directly to your injury or loss. This is called causation. Your attorney will use evidence like your medical or patient reports, witness testimony and expert testimony to prove that the defendant’s failure to comply with the standard of care was the primary cause of injury or loss to you.

Breach

A doctor has a duty of care to his patients which conforms to the highest standards of medical practice. If a doctor fails to meet these standards and fails to do so results in injury, medical malpractice and negligence may occur. Expert witness testimony from medical professionals that have the same training, certifications and skills can help determine the standard of care for a specific situation. Federal and state laws and institute policies also determine what doctors should do for specific types of patients.

To be successful in a malpractice case the evidence must prove that the doctor breached his or her duty of care and that this violation was the primary cause of an injury. This is referred to in legal terms as the causation factor and it is imperative that it be established. For instance when a broken arm requires an x-ray, the doctor malpractice must place the arm and put it in a cast for proper healing. If the physician failed to do so and the patient was left with a permanent loss of the use of the arm, then malpractice could have occurred.

Causation

Attorney malpractice claims are based on the evidence that proves that the lawyer's errors resulted in financial losses for the client. Legal malpractice claims may be brought by the injured party for example, if the lawyer fails to file the suit within the statutes of limitations and the case being thrown out forever.

It's important to know that not all errors made by attorneys are considered to be malpractice. Strategies and planning errors are not typically considered to be negligence. Attorneys have a broad choice of discretion when it comes to making decisions, as long as they're able to make them in a reasonable manner.

The law also allows lawyers considerable latitude to not perform discovery on behalf of their clients, so long as the error was not unreasonable or negligent. Failure to uncover important information or documents like medical reports or statements of witnesses could be a sign of legal malpractice. Other examples of malpractice are a failure to add certain claims or defendants such as omitting to include a survival count in a wrongful death lawsuit or the consistent and malpractice long-running failure to contact clients.

It is also important to remember the fact that the plaintiff needs to show that if it wasn't for the lawyer's careless conduct they would have prevailed. If not, the plaintiff's claims for malpractice will be rejected. This makes the filing of legal malpractice claims a challenge. For this reason, it's crucial to hire an experienced attorney to represent you.

Damages

A plaintiff must show that the lawyer's actions led to actual financial losses to prevail in a legal malpractice suit. This can be proven in a lawsuit with evidence like expert testimony, correspondence between client and attorney, billing records and other documentation. In addition, the plaintiff must prove that a reasonable lawyer could have avoided the harm that was caused by the negligence of the attorney. This is referred to as the proximate cause.

Malpractice occurs in many ways. Some of the most common types of malpractice include failing to meet a deadline, including a statute of limitation, failure to conduct a check on conflicts or other due diligence check on the case, not applying law to a client's situation or breaching a fiduciary obligation (i.e. merging funds from a trust account with the attorney's own accounts as well as not communicating with the client are all examples of malpractice.

In the majority of medical malpractice cases, the plaintiff will seek compensatory damages. These compensations are intended to compensate the victim for out-of pocket expenses and losses, such as medical and hospitals bills, costs of equipment to aid recovery, 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 stress.

Legal malpractice cases usually involve claims for compensatory or punitive damages. The former compensates victims for losses caused by the attorney's negligence while the latter is designed to discourage any future malpractice on the part of the defendant.