Medical malpractice law firm Lawsuits

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

The mistakes made by lawyers are legal malpractice. To prove legal negligence, the aggrieved must show the duty, breach of obligation, causation, as well as damages. Let's look at each of these elements.

Duty-Free

Doctors and other medical professionals swear to apply their education and skills to cure patients and not to cause further harm. A patient's legal right to receive compensation for injuries resulting from medical malpractice hinges on the concept of duty of care. Your attorney can help you determine whether or not your doctor's actions violated this duty of care, and if the breach caused harm or illness to your.

To prove a duty of care, your lawyer will need to show that a medical professional had an legal relationship with you in which they were bound by a fiduciary duty to exercise an acceptable level of expertise and care. To prove that the relationship existed, you could require evidence like the records of your doctor and patient or eyewitness evidence, or experts from doctors with similar experience, education and training.

Your lawyer will also need to establish that the medical professional violated their duty of care by failing to follow the accepted standards in their area of expertise. This is often referred to as negligence, and your attorney will examine the defendant's actions to what a reasonable individual would take in the same scenario.

Finally, your lawyer must show that the defendant's breach of duty directly led to the loss or injury you suffered. This is referred to as causation, and your attorney will rely on evidence such as your medical documents, witness statements and expert testimony to prove that the defendant's failure to uphold the standards of care in your case was a direct cause of your injury or loss.

Breach

A doctor has a duty to patients of care that reflect the highest standards of medical professionalism. If a doctor fails to meet those standards, and the result is an injury and/or medical malpractice, then negligence could result. Expert evidence from medical professionals who have similar training, certificates as well as experience and qualifications can help determine the standard of care in a particular situation. State and federal laws as well as institute policies can also be used to define what doctors must do for certain types of patients.

To prevail in a malpractice lawyers lawsuit it is necessary to prove that the doctor violated his or his duty of care and that the breach was the direct cause of injury. This is referred to in legal terms as the causation element and it is imperative to establish. For instance when a broken arm requires an xray, the doctor must properly fix the arm and place it in a cast for proper healing. If the doctor fails to perform this, and the patient loses their the use of the arm, then malpractice may be at play.

Causation

Attorney malpractice claims rely on evidence that the attorney's errors resulted in financial losses for the client. For instance the lawyer does not file a lawsuit within the statute of limitations, resulting in the case being lost forever the party who suffered damages could bring legal malpractice lawsuits.

However, it's important to understand that not all mistakes made by lawyers are a sign of illegal. Strategies and mistakes are not generally considered to be malpractice and lawyers have lots of freedom to make decisions based on their judgments as long as they are reasonable.

The law also allows lawyers an enormous amount of discretion to not conduct discovery on behalf of clients provided that the error was not unreasonable or a result of negligence. Legal malpractice can be caused by not obtaining crucial documents or information, such as medical reports or witness statements. Other instances of malpractice could be a failure to add certain claims or defendants such as omitting to submit a survival count in a case of wrongful death or the consistent and long-running inability to communicate with the client.

It is also important to consider the necessity for the plaintiff to show that if it wasn't due to the lawyer's negligent behavior they would have prevailed. In the event that it is not, the plaintiff's claim for malpractice will be denied. This makes it difficult to bring an action for legal malpractice. This is why it's important to find 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. This has to be demonstrated in a lawsuit using evidence such as expert testimony, correspondence between client and attorney or billing records, and other records. The plaintiff must also show that a reasonable attorney could have prevented the damage caused by the lawyer's negligence. This is known as proximate causation.

Malpractice occurs in many ways. The most frequent kinds of malpractice are: failing to adhere to a deadline, which includes a statute of limitation, failure to conduct a conflict check or other due diligence of a case, improperly applying the law to the client's situation or breaching a fiduciary obligation (i.e. the commingling of funds from a trust account an attorney's account, mishandling a case and failing to communicate with the client are all examples of malpractice.

Medical malpractice lawsuits typically include claims for compensatory damages. These compensations compensate the victim for expenses out of pocket and expenses such as medical and hospitals bills, the cost of equipment to aid in recovery and lost wages. Victims are also able to claim non-economic damages like discomfort and pain and loss of enjoyment their lives, as well as emotional stress.

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