Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys are required to fulfill a fiduciary responsibility to their clients, and they must act with a high degree of skill, diligence and care. However, just like any other professional attorneys make mistakes.

There are many mistakes made by lawyers are a result of malpractice. To prove that legal malpractice has occurred, the aggrieved party must show duty, breach, causation and damages. Let's take a look at each of these aspects.

Duty-Free

Medical professionals and doctors take an oath that they will use their expertise and knowledge to cure patients, not to cause further harm. A patient's legal right to compensation for injuries suffered due to medical malpractice is based on the notion of duty of care. Your lawyer can help determine if your doctor's actions breached this duty of care, and if the breach caused injury or illness to you.

To prove a duty to care, your lawyer needs to demonstrate that a medical professional has an legal relationship with you and had a fiduciary obligation to exercise reasonable skill and care. This relationship can be established by eyewitness testimony, physician-patient documents and expert testimony from doctors with similar educational, experience and training.

Your lawyer will also need to show that the medical professional violated their duty to care by failing to adhere to the accepted standards in their area of expertise. This is often referred to as negligence. Your lawyer will assess the conduct of the defendant with what a reasonable person would do in the same circumstance.

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

Breach

A doctor has a duty to patients of care that conform to the highest standards of medical professionalism. If a physician fails to live up to those standards and fails to do so results in injury, medical malpractice and negligence may occur. Expert testimonials from medical professionals who possess similar qualifications, training and skills can help determine the quality of care in a particular situation. Federal and state laws, as well as institute policies, define what doctors are required to provide for specific types of patients.

To prevail in a malpractice lawsuit the case must be proved that the doctor violated his or his duty of care and that the breach was a direct cause of injury. This is known in legal terms as the causation factor and it is crucial that it is established. For example when a broken arm requires an x-ray the doctor must place the arm and put it in a cast to ensure proper healing. If the doctor did not do this and the patient was left with a permanent loss of function 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. Legal malpractice claims can be filed by the party who suffered the loss when, for instance, the lawyer fails to file the lawsuit within the prescribed time and results in the case being forever lost.

It is important to understand that not all mistakes made by lawyers constitute malpractice. Mistakes in strategy and planning are not usually considered to be malpractice attorneys are given the ability to make judgment calls as long as they're reasonable.

The law also gives attorneys a lot of discretion to conduct discovery on behalf of a client, so provided that the decision was not negligent or unreasonable. Legal malpractice can be caused through the failure to uncover important documents or facts, like medical reports or witness statements. Other examples of malpractice are a inability to include certain claims or defendants for example, like forgetting to file a survival count in a wrongful death case or the frequent and extended inability to contact clients.

It is also important to consider the fact that the plaintiff has to show that if it wasn't the lawyer's negligence, they could have won their case. The plaintiff's claim of malpractice will be dismissed if it is not proven. This requirement makes bringing legal malpractice claims difficult. Therefore, it's crucial to hire an experienced attorney to represent you.

Damages

A plaintiff must demonstrate that the attorney's actions have caused actual financial losses in order to win a legal malpractice law firms suit. In the case of a lawsuit this has to be proven through evidence, like expert testimony or correspondence between the attorney and the client. In addition the plaintiff has to prove that a reasonable lawyer would have avoided the harm caused by the negligence of the attorney. This is known as proximate cause.

Malpractice occurs in many ways. The most frequent malpractices include: failing a deadline or statute of limitations; not performing an investigation into a conflict in an issue; applying the law in a way that is not appropriate to the client's circumstances; and breaching an obligation of fiduciary (i.e. merging funds from a trust account the attorney's personal accounts or handling a case in a wrong manner, and failing to communicate with the client are all examples of malpractice.

Medical malpractice attorney lawsuits typically include claims for compensatory damages. These damages compensate the victim for out-of pocket expenses and losses, such as medical and hospitals bills, the cost of equipment to aid in recovery, and lost wages. Victims can also seek non-economic damages such as pain and discomfort and loss of enjoyment their lives, as well as emotional stress.

In many legal malpractice cases, there are claims for punitive or compensatory damages. The former compensates victims for losses caused by the negligence of the attorney, whereas the latter is intended to discourage future misconduct by the defendant.