Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys have a fiduciary obligation with their clients and are expected to behave with diligence, care and ability. However, like all professionals, attorneys make mistakes.

Every mistake made by an attorney constitutes legal malpractice. To prove legal malpractice, an victim must prove duty, breach, causation and damage. Let's look at each of these components.

Duty-Free

Medical professionals and doctors take an oath to apply their skills and experience to treat patients, and not causing further harm. A patient's legal right to compensation for injuries suffered due to medical malpractice is based on the concept of the duty of care. Your attorney will determine if the actions of your doctor breached the duty of medical care and if these breaches resulted in injury or illness.

To prove a duty to care, your lawyer will need to show that a medical professional had a legal relationship with you, in which they owed you a fiduciary responsibility to exercise a reasonable level of competence and care. This can be proved by eyewitness testimony, doctor-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 failing to adhere to the accepted standards of practice in their field. This is often called negligence. Your lawyer will evaluate the defendant's conduct with what a reasonable person would take in the same scenario.

Then, your lawyer has to demonstrate that the defendant's breach of duty directly caused your loss or injury. This is referred to as causation. Your attorney will rely on evidence like your doctor-patient records, witness statements and expert testimony to prove that the defendant's inability to meet the standard of care in your case was the direct cause of your injury or loss.

Breach

A doctor has a duty of care to his patients which conforms to the highest standards of medical practice. If a doctor fails to meet these standards and fails to do so results in injury, then medical malpractice and negligence could occur. Typically expert testimony from medical professionals with similar training, skills and certifications will help determine what the standard of care is in a specific situation. State and federal laws, as well as policies of the institute, help define what doctors are required to do for certain kinds of patients.

To win a malpractice case it must be proven that the doctor violated his or his duty of care and that the breach was a direct cause of an injury. This is known in legal terms as the causation factor and it is essential to prove it. For instance in the event that a damaged arm requires an xray the doctor has to properly fix the arm and place it in a cast for proper healing. If the doctor was unable to do this and the patient suffered an irreparable loss of use of that arm, then malpractice may have occurred.

Causation

Legal malpractice claims are founded on the evidence that the attorney committed mistakes that caused financial losses to the client. For instance when a lawyer does not file a lawsuit within the statute of limitations, resulting in the case being lost for ever the party who suffered damages can bring legal malpractice actions.

It is important to realize that not all errors made by attorneys constitute illegal. Errors involving strategy and planning do not typically constitute malpractice attorneys have a lot of latitude in making judgment calls so long as they are reasonable.

The law also gives attorneys a lot of discretion to conduct discovery on behalf of the behalf of clients, so in the event that it is not unreasonable or negligent. Inability to find important details or documents, such as medical or witness statements, is a potential example of legal malpractice. Other instances of malpractice include the inability to add certain defendants or claims, such as the mistake of not remembering a survival number for the case of wrongful death or the constant failure to communicate with clients.

It is also important to consider the necessity for the plaintiff to prove that, if not for the lawyer's negligent conduct, they could have won their case. If not, the plaintiff's claims for malpractice will be rejected. This requirement makes bringing legal malpractice claims difficult. This is why it's important to choose a seasoned attorney to represent you.

Damages

In order to prevail in a legal malpractice lawsuit plaintiffs must show financial losses resulting from the actions of an attorney. This must be shown in a lawsuit with evidence such as expert testimony, correspondence between the client and attorney, billing records and other documentation. In addition, the plaintiff must prove that a reasonable lawyer could have avoided the harm caused by the negligence of the attorney. This is known as proximate cause.

It can happen in many different ways. Some of the more common kinds of malpractice law firm are the failure to meet a deadline, for example, the statute of limitations, failing to conduct a conflict-check or other due diligence check on a case, improperly applying the law to a client's case and breaching a fiduciary responsibility (i.e. merging funds from a trust account with the attorney's personal accounts as well as not communicating with the client are just a few examples of misconduct.

In the majority of medical malpractice cases the plaintiff is seeking compensation damages. They compensate the victim for out-of-pocket expenses and losses, such as medical and hospital bills, costs of equipment that aids in healing, as well as lost wages. Victims can also claim non-economic damages, such as discomfort and pain, loss of enjoyment of their lives, and emotional stress.

Legal malpractice cases typically involve claims for compensatory and punitive damages. The first compensates victims for losses caused by the negligence of the attorney while the latter is designed to discourage future malpractice on the part of the defendant.