Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys have a fiduciary connection with their clients and are expected to act with diligence, care and competence. However, like all professionals attorneys make mistakes.

The mistakes made by lawyers are malpractice. To prove that legal malpractice has occurred, the aggrieved party has to prove obligation, breach, causation and damages. Let's look at each of these elements.

Duty-Free

Medical professionals and doctors swear by their training and experience to help patients and not to cause harm to others. The duty of care is the foundation for a patient's right to compensation for injuries caused by medical malpractice. Your attorney can determine if the actions of your doctor breached the duty of medical care and if the breach caused injury or illness.

Your lawyer has to prove that the medical professional you hired owed a fiduciary duty to act with reasonable skill and care. This relationship may be proven by eyewitness testimony, physician-patient records and expert testimony of doctors who have similar education, experience and training.

Your lawyer must also prove that the medical professional violated their duty of care by not living up to the accepted standards of practice in their field. This is commonly described as negligence. Your attorney will compare the actions of the defendant to what a reasonable individual would do in a similar situation.

Your lawyer will also need to prove that the defendant's breach directly contributed to your loss or injury. This is referred to as causation. Your lawyer will make use of evidence like your medical or patient records, witness testimony and expert testimony, to prove that the defendant's inability to comply with the standard of care was the direct cause of injury or loss to you.

Breach

A doctor has a duty of care for his patients that conforms to the highest standards of medical practice. If a physician fails to meet these standards, and the result is an injury or medical malpractice, then negligence may occur. Typically, expert testimony from medical professionals with similar training, skills or certifications will help determine what the appropriate standard of medical care should be in a particular case. State and federal laws and institute policies also define what doctors must perform for specific types of patients.

In order to win a malpractice claim it must be proved that the doctor violated his or her duty of take care of patients and that the breach was the direct cause of an injury. This is referred to in legal terms as the causation element and it is crucial that it be established. If a physician has to perform an x-ray on an injured arm, they have to put the arm in a casting and correctly place it. If the doctor failed to do so and the patient suffered a permanent loss of use of the arm, then malpractice could have occurred.

Causation

Attorney malpractice claims are built on the basis of evidence that a lawyer made mistakes that caused financial losses for the client. Legal malpractice claims may be brought by the victim when, for instance, the attorney is unable to file a lawsuit within the timeframe of the statute of limitations, which results in the case being thrown out forever.

It is crucial to realize that not all errors made by attorneys are malpractice. Strategy and planning errors are not typically considered to be the definition of malpractice. Attorneys have a broad decision-making discretion to make decisions so long as they're rational.

The law also grants attorneys the right to refuse to conduct discovery on behalf of a client, so long as the decision was not arbitrary or negligent. Legal malpractice can be caused by not obtaining crucial documents or information, such as medical reports or witness statements. Other examples of malpractice are a failure to add certain defendants or claims for example, like forgetting to make a survival claim in a case of wrongful death or the continual and prolonged failure to contact the client.

It is also important to consider the fact that the plaintiff must show that if it wasn't for the lawyer's careless conduct they could have won their case. The plaintiff's claim for malpractice is rejected when it isn't proven. This makes it difficult to bring an action for legal malpractice. It's crucial to hire an experienced attorney to represent you.

Damages

A plaintiff must prove that the attorney's actions have caused actual financial losses to prevail in a legal malpractice lawsuit. In a lawsuit, this needs to be proved with evidence, like expert testimony or correspondence between the attorney and the client. In addition, the plaintiff must prove that a reasonable lawyer would have prevented the harm that was caused by the negligence of the attorney. This is referred to as proximate causation.

The causes of malpractice vary. Some of the most common kinds of malpractice are: failing to meet a deadline, for example, the statute of limitations, failure to conduct a conflict check or other due diligence of the case, attorneys not applying law to a client's circumstance, breaching a fiduciary duty (i.e. mixing trust account funds with an attorney's personal accounts), mishandling of an instance, and not communicating with the client.

In most medical malpractice cases the plaintiff seeks compensation damages. These compensations are intended to compensate the victim for out-of pocket expenses and expenses like hospital and medical bills, the cost of equipment to aid in recovery, and lost wages. Victims are also able to claim non-economic damages such as discomfort and pain, loss of enjoyment of their lives, and emotional anxiety.

In a lot of legal malpractice cases there are claims for punitive and compensatory damages. The former compensates victims for losses resulting from the attorney's negligence, while the latter is intended to discourage future malpractice by the defendant.