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Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys have a fiduciary connection with their clients and are expected to behave with diligence, care and competence. However, just like any other professional attorneys make mistakes.

Not every mistake made by an attorney can be considered negligence. To prove negligence in a legal sense the person who was hurt must prove the duty, breach of obligation, causation, and damages. Let’s examine each of these elements.

Duty-Free

Medical professionals and doctors swear an oath that they will use their knowledge and expertise to treat patients and not causing further harm. A patient’s legal right to be compensated for injuries sustained from medical malpractice is based on the notion of duty of care. Your attorney will determine if your doctor’s actions violated the duty to care and whether these violations caused you injury or illness.

To establish a duty of care, your lawyer has to show that a medical professional has an official relationship with you in which they were bound by a fiduciary duty to perform their duties with a reasonable level of competence and care. This relationship can be established by eyewitness testimony of witnesses, doctor-patient records, and expert testimony of doctors who have similar educational, experience and training.

Your lawyer will also need to establish that the medical professional breached their duty of care by failing to follow the accepted standards of their area of expertise. This is often referred to by the term negligence. Your lawyer will evaluate the actions of the defendant to what a reasonable person would do in the same situation.

Your lawyer must prove that the defendant’s breach of duty directly resulted in your loss or injury. This is called causation. Your lawyer will use evidence like your doctor or patient records, witness testimony and expert testimony to prove that the defendant’s failure to meet the standards of care was the main cause of the injury or loss to you.

Breach

A doctor is obligated to patients to perform duties of care that are consistent with the highest standards of medical professionalism. If a doctor does not meet these standards, and the result is an injury, then medical malpractice law firms or negligence could occur. Expert testimony from medical professionals who have similar training, certifications, skills and experience can help determine the quality of care in a particular situation. State and federal laws, along with guidelines from the institute, help determine what doctors are required to provide for specific types of patients.

To prevail in a malpractice lawsuit it must be proven that the doctor violated his or her duty of care and that the breach was the direct cause of an injury. In legal terms, this is referred to as the causation component, and it is crucial that it is established. For example in the event that a damaged arm requires an xray, the doctor must fix the arm and place it in a cast for proper healing. If the physician failed to do so and the patient was left with an unavoidable loss of function of that arm, then malpractice could have occurred.

Causation

Attorney malpractice claims are based on the evidence that the attorney made errors that resulted in financial losses to the client. For example the lawyer does not file an action within the timeframe of limitations, leading to the case being lost for ever the party who suffered damages could bring legal malpractice lawsuits.

However, it’s crucial to be aware that not all errors made by lawyers are a sign of mistakes that constitute malpractice. Errors involving strategy and planning aren’t usually considered to be a violation of the law, and attorneys have a lot of latitude to make judgment calls as long as they’re reasonable.

The law also allows attorneys the right to refuse to conduct discovery on behalf of clients in the event that the decision was not arbitrary or negligence. Legal malpractice can be caused when a lawyer fails to find important documents or facts, such as medical reports or witness statements. Other examples of malpractice include a inability to include certain claims or defendants such as omitting to make a survival claim in a case of wrongful death or the continual and extended inability to communicate with a client.

It is also important to note the fact that the plaintiff must show that if it wasn’t the lawyer’s negligence they could have won their case. The plaintiff’s claim for malpractice will be dismissed when it isn’t proven. This requirement makes the process of bringing legal malpractice lawsuits difficult. It’s crucial to hire an experienced attorney.

Damages

A plaintiff must show that the attorney’s actions have caused actual financial losses in order to win a legal malpractice lawsuit. This can be proven in a lawsuit with evidence such as expert testimony, correspondence between the client and attorney along with billing records and other evidence. A plaintiff must also prove that a reasonable attorney would have prevented the harm caused by the negligence of the lawyer. This is referred to as the proximate cause.

Malpractice can occur in many different ways. The most frequent kinds of malpractice are the failure to meet a deadline, such as the statute of limitations, a failure to perform a conflict check or any other due diligence on the case, not applying law to a client’s circumstance, breaching a fiduciary duty (i.e. commingling trust account funds with personal attorney accounts) and mishandling an instance, and failing to communicate with the client.

In the majority of medical malpractice cases the plaintiff is seeking compensation damages. They are awarded to the victim in exchange for out-of-pocket expenses and losses, including medical and hospital bills, the cost of equipment needed to aid in recovery, and loss of wages. Victims are also able to claim non-economic damages like pain and discomfort, loss of enjoyment of their lives, and emotional stress.

In many legal malpractice cases there are cases for punitive and compensatory damages. The former compensates victims for losses resulting from the negligence of an attorney, while the latter is designed to discourage future malpractice by the defendant.