Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys have a fiduciary connection with their clients and are expected to conduct themselves with diligence, care and skill. Attorneys make mistakes, as do other professional.

Not all mistakes made by an attorney are a result of malpractice. To prove legal negligence, the aggrieved must show obligation, breach of duty, causation and damages. Let's take a look at each of these components.

Duty

Doctors and other medical professionals swear to apply their education and expertise to treat patients and not cause further harm. Duty of care is the foundation for patients' right to compensation for injuries caused by medical malpractice. Your attorney can help you determine whether or not the actions of your doctor violated this duty of care, and whether these breaches resulted in injury or illness to you.

To establish a duty of care, your lawyer needs to demonstrate that a medical professional has an legal relationship with you in which they owed you a fiduciary responsibility to perform their duties with an acceptable level of expertise and care. This relationship can be established by eyewitness testimony, physician-patient reports and expert testimony from doctors who have similar education, experience and training.

Your lawyer must also show that the medical professional breached their duty of care by not submitting to the accepted standards of practice in their area of expertise. This is often called negligence. Your lawyer will compare the defendant's behavior with what a reasonable person would perform in the same situation.

Your lawyer must also demonstrate that the defendant's breach directly caused your injury or loss. This is known as causation, and your lawyer will make use of evidence like your doctor-patient documents, witness statements, and expert testimony to demonstrate that the defendant's inability to meet the standard of care in your case was a direct cause of your loss or injury.

Breach

A doctor has a responsibility of care for his patients that conforms to the highest standards of medical practice. If a doctor does not meet those standards, and the resulting failure causes an injury, then medical mount vernon malpractice lawsuit or negligence can occur. Typically, expert testimony from medical professionals with similar training, skills, certifications and experience will help determine what the appropriate standard of care is in a particular circumstance. Federal and state laws, along with guidelines from the institute, help determine what doctors are required to provide for specific types of patients.

To be successful in a malpractice case the evidence must prove that the doctor violated his or her duty of care and that the violation was a direct reason for an injury. This is known in legal terms as the causation factor and it is vital to prove it. For example when a broken arm requires an x-ray, the doctor must properly set the arm and then place it in a cast to ensure proper healing. If the doctor is unable to do this and the patient is left with a permanent loss of usage of the arm, 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 a lawsuit within the statute of limitations, which results 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. Mistakes in strategy and planning are not usually considered to be goodland malpractice lawsuit attorneys are given the ability to make judgement calls so long as they are reasonable.

The law also grants attorneys the right to refuse to conduct discovery on behalf of a client as long as the error was not unreasonable or a case of negligence. Legal malpractice can be caused by not obtaining crucial documents or facts, like medical reports or witness statements. Other instances of malpractice include the failure to include certain defendants or claims, such as forgetting a survival count for the case of wrongful death, or the repeated failure to communicate with clients.

It is also important to remember 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 denied. This requirement makes the process of bringing legal malpractice lawsuits difficult. It is crucial to find an experienced attorney.

Damages

To prevail in a legal malpractice suit, plaintiffs must show financial losses that result from an attorney's actions. This has to be demonstrated in a lawsuit using evidence such as expert testimony, correspondence between the client and attorney along with billing records and other documentation. In addition the plaintiff has to prove that a reasonable lawyer could have prevented the harm caused by the negligence of the attorney. This is called proximate causation.

Malpractice can manifest in a number of different ways. Some of the most common kinds of malpractice are: failing to meet a deadline, for example, a statute of limitations, a failure to conduct a conflict check or other due diligence on the case, not applying law to a client's situation or breaching a fiduciary obligation (i.e. the commingling of trust account funds with personal attorney accounts) or mishandling a case, and lawsuits failing to communicate with the client.

Medical malpractice lawsuits typically involve claims for compensation damages. These compensate the victim for expenses out of pocket and losses, such as hospital and medical bills, the cost of equipment that aids in healing, lawsuits as well as lost wages. Victims may also claim non-economic damages like pain and discomfort as well as loss of enjoyment from their lives, and emotional stress.

In many legal malpractice cases there are lawsuits for punitive as well as compensatory damages. The former compensates victims for losses caused by the attorney's negligence and the latter is intended to deter future malpractice by the defendant's side.