Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys are in a fiduciary position with their clients and are required to behave with care, diligence and ability. But, as with all professionals attorneys make mistakes.

Not every mistake made by an attorney can be considered an act of malpractice. To demonstrate legal santa Fe malpractice attorney, an aggrieved party must show duty, breach, causation and damage. Let's take a look at each of these aspects.

Duty

Doctors and other medical professionals swear to apply their education and skills to cure patients and not to cause harm to others. The legal right of a patient to compensation for injuries suffered from medical malpractice hinges on the concept of duty of care. Your attorney will determine if your doctor's actions breached the duty of medical care and if these breaches caused injury or illness.

Your lawyer must prove that the medical professional in question owed you the fiduciary obligation to act with reasonable skill and care. This can be proved by eyewitness testimony of witnesses, doctor-patient records, and expert testimony of doctors with similar education, experience, and training.

Your lawyer must also show that the medical professional violated their duty of care by not living up to the standards of practice that are accepted in their area of expertise. This is often called negligence. Your lawyer will compare the defendant's behavior to what a reasonable individual would do in the same situation.

Your lawyer will also need to prove that the breach by the defendant directly contributed to your loss or injury. This is known as causation. Your attorney will use evidence, such as your doctor/patient records, witness testimony and expert testimony, to demonstrate that the defendant’s failure to meet the standard of care was the direct reason for the loss or injury to you.

Breach

A doctor is bound by a duty of care to his patients that is in line with professional medical standards. If a physician fails to meet those standards, and the resulting failure causes an injury, then medical malpractice or negligence may occur. Typically expert testimony from medical professionals with similar training, skills and certifications will help determine what the standard of treatment should be in a specific situation. Federal and state laws, along with guidelines from the institute, help define what doctors are expected to do for certain kinds of patients.

In order to win a malpractice claim, it must be shown that the doctor violated his or their duty of care, and that the breach was a direct cause of injury. In legal terms, this is referred to as the causation factor and it is vital that it is established. For instance, if a broken arm requires an xray the doctor must properly set the arm and then place it in a cast for proper healing. If the doctor was unable to complete the procedure and the patient was left with an irreparable loss of use of the arm, then malpractice may have occurred.

Causation

Attorney malpractice claims rely on evidence that the attorney's errors resulted in financial losses for the client. For example when a lawyer does not file a lawsuit within the prescribed time of limitations, leading to the case being lost for ever, the injured party can bring legal malpractice actions.

It is important to realize that not all mistakes made by attorneys constitute wrong. Strategy and planning errors are not typically considered to be misconduct. Attorneys have a broad range of discretion to make decisions so long as they're reasonable.

In addition, the law allows attorneys a wide range of options to refuse to conduct a discovery process on behalf of a client, so long as the action was not unreasonable or negligent. Failing to discover important documents or facts, such as medical reports or witness statements could be a sign of legal malpractice. Other examples of malpractice include a failure to add certain claims or defendants, such as forgetting to submit a survival count in a case of wrongful death, or the repeated and prolonged failure to communicate with a client.

It is also important to remember that it has to be proven that, had it not been the negligence of the lawyer, the plaintiff would have won the case. In the event that it is not, the plaintiff's claim for fenton malpractice lawsuit will be rejected. This makes the process of bringing legal malpractice claims complicated. Therefore, it's essential to choose an experienced attorney to represent you.

Damages

A plaintiff must prove that the lawyer's actions led to actual financial losses in order to prevail in a legal malpractice lawsuit. In a lawsuit, this must be proven with evidence like expert testimony or correspondence between the attorney and the client. The plaintiff must also show that a reasonable lawyer could have prevented the damage caused by the negligence of the lawyer. This is referred to as the proximate cause.

The causes of malpractice vary. Some of the more common kinds of malpractice are failing to meet a deadline, such as the statute of limitation, failure to perform a conflict check or other due diligence check on the case, not applying the law to a client's case or breaching a fiduciary obligation (i.e. mixing trust account funds with attorney's personal accounts) and mishandling the case, or not communicating with a client.

Medical malpractice lawsuits typically include claims for compensation damages. They compensate the victim for the out-of-pocket expenses and losses, for example medical and hospital bills, costs of equipment that aids in healing, as well as lost wages. In addition, victims can be able to claim non-economic damages such as suffering and suffering or loss of enjoyment life, and 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 while the latter is designed to deter future malpractice by the defendant's side.