Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys have a fiduciary connection with their clients and are required to conduct themselves with diligence, care and skill. But, as with all professionals, lawsuit attorneys make mistakes.

The errors made by attorneys are legal malpractice. To prove legal malpractice, an victim must prove the breach of duty, duty, causation and damages. Let's review each of these aspects.

Duty-Free

Doctors and medical professionals take the oath of using their knowledge and expertise to treat patients and not causing further harm. The legal right of a patient to be compensated for injuries sustained from medical malpractice rests on the concept of duty of care. Your attorney can help you determine if the actions of your doctor violated this duty of care, and if those breaches caused injury or illness to you.

To establish a duty of care, your lawyer has to establish that a medical professional has an official relationship with you, in which they had a fiduciary obligation to exercise a reasonable level of expertise and care. This can be demonstrated by eyewitness testimony, doctor-patient reports and expert testimony from doctors who have similar educational, lawsuit experience and training.

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

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

Breach

A doctor is bound by a duty of care for his patients that reflects professional medical standards. If a doctor fails to adhere to these standards and that failure results in injury, then medical malpractice and negligence may occur. Typically the testimony of medical professionals with similar qualifications, training and experience, as well as certifications and certificates will help determine what the appropriate standard of care should be in a particular case. State and federal laws, as well as guidelines from the institute, help define what doctors are expected to do for certain kinds of patients.

To prevail in a malpractice lawsuit it must be proven that the doctor breached his or duty of care and that the breach was a direct cause of injury. In legal terms, this is known as the causation factor and it is crucial that it is established. If a doctor has to conduct an x-ray examination of a broken arm, they have to put the arm in a cast and then correctly place it. If the doctor was unable to perform this task and the patient suffered permanent loss of the use of the 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. For instance when a lawyer fails to file a lawsuit within the statute of limitations, leading to the case being lost for ever the party who suffered damages could bring legal malpractice lawsuits.

It is important to realize that not all errors made by lawyers are a sign of illegal. Planning and strategy errors aren't usually considered to be a sign of negligence. Attorneys have a broad range of discretion to make decisions, as long as they're rational.

Likewise, the law gives attorneys a wide range of options to refuse to perform discovery on behalf of a client, so provided that the decision was not negligent or unreasonable. Failure to uncover important information or documents, such as medical or witness statements could be a sign of legal malpractice. Other instances of malpractice include inability to include certain claims or defendants for example, like forgetting to include a survival count in a wrongful death lawsuit, or the repeated and extended failure to communicate with a client.

It's also important to keep in mind that it must be established that but the negligence of the lawyer, the plaintiff would have won the case. The claim of malpractice by the plaintiff will be rejected if it's not proved. This requirement makes the process of bringing legal malpractice lawyer lawsuits difficult. This is why it's essential to choose an experienced attorney to represent you.

Damages

To win a legal malpractice lawsuit, plaintiffs must show financial losses incurred by the actions of the attorney. This must be shown in a lawsuit with evidence like expert testimony, correspondence between the client and attorney as well as billing records and other records. A plaintiff must also demonstrate 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 act of malpractice can be triggered in a variety of different ways. Some of the most common types of malpractice include the failure to adhere to a deadline, which includes the statute of limitations, a failure to perform a conflict check or other due diligence of the case, not applying law to a client's circumstance or breaking a fiduciary duty (i.e. commingling trust account funds with an attorney's personal accounts), mishandling of the case, or failing to communicate with the client.

Medical malpractice lawsuits typically involve claims for compensation damages. These damages compensate the victim for the cost of out-of-pocket expenses and losses such as hospital and medical bills, the cost of equipment to aid in recovery, and lost wages. In addition, victims can seek non-economic damages, like suffering and suffering or loss of enjoyment life and emotional suffering.

In a lot of legal malpractice cases, there are lawsuits for punitive as well as compensatory damages. The former compensates a victim for the losses caused by the attorney's negligence, while the latter is intended to deter future malpractice by the defendant.