Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys have a fiduciary duty to their clients and they must behave with skill, diligence and care. However, like all professionals, attorneys make mistakes.

A mistake made by an attorney is an act of malpractice. To demonstrate legal malpractice, an aggrieved party has to prove the breach of duty, duty, causation and damages. Let's take a look at each of these elements.

Duty-Free

Medical professionals and doctors take an oath to use their expertise and knowledge to cure patients, not cause additional harm. The duty of care is the foundation for the right of patients to receive compensation in the event of injury due to medical malpractice. Your attorney will determine if the actions of your doctor violated the duty to care and if these breaches resulted in injury or illness.

To prove a duty to care, your lawyer will need to prove that a medical professional has a legal relationship with you, in which they were bound by a fiduciary duty to act with an acceptable level of skill and care. This can be demonstrated by eyewitness testimony, doctor-patient records and expert testimony of doctors with similar educational, experience and training.

Your lawyer must also show that the medical professional violated their duty of care by not submitting to the standards of practice that are accepted in their area of expertise. This is commonly called negligence. Your attorney will compare what the defendant did with what a reasonable individual would do in the same situation.

Your lawyer will also need to prove that the defendant's negligence led directly to your injury or loss. This is referred to as causation. Your attorney will use evidence such as your medical documents, witness statements, and expert testimony to demonstrate that the defendant's inability to live up to the standards of care in your case was a direct cause of your injury or loss.

Breach

A doctor is bound by a duty of care to his patients which is in line with professional medical standards. If a physician fails to live up to those standards and the failure results in injury, then medical malpractice or negligence could occur. Typically the testimony of medical professionals with similar qualifications, training or certifications will assist in determining what the minimum standard of treatment should be in a particular case. State and federal laws and institute policies also help determine what doctors should do for certain types of patients.

In order to win a malpractice claim it is necessary to prove that the doctor violated his or duty of care and that this breach was the direct cause of an injury. This is known in legal terms as the causation component and it is imperative to prove it. For example when a broken arm requires an x-ray the doctor must set the arm and then place it in a cast to ensure proper healing. If the doctor failed to perform this task and the patient was left with an irreparable loss of function of that arm, then malpractice may have occurred.

Causation

Legal malpractice claims founded on the evidence that a lawyer made mistakes that resulted in financial losses for the client. Legal malpractice claims may be brought by the party who suffered the loss when, for instance, the lawyer fails to file the suit within the timeframes set by the statute of limitations, which results in the case being lost forever.

It is important to understand that not all errors made by attorneys constitute malpractice. Strategies and planning mistakes are not always considered to be malpractice. Attorneys have a wide decision-making discretion to make decisions as long as they're reasonable.

The law also allows lawyers the right to refuse to conduct discovery on behalf of a client as long as the failure was not unreasonable or negligent. Legal malpractice can be caused through the failure to uncover important documents or evidence, such as medical reports or witness statements. Other instances of Malpractice Attorney could be a failure to add certain defendants or claims such as omitting to make a survival claim in a wrongful death case, or the repeated and extended inability to communicate with clients.

It is also important to consider the necessity for the plaintiff to prove that, if not for the lawyer's careless conduct, they could have won their case. In the event that it is not, the plaintiff's claim for malpractice lawyers will be rejected. This makes the process of bringing legal malpractice lawsuits difficult. For this reason, it's essential to choose an experienced attorney to represent you.

Damages

A plaintiff must show that the attorney's actions have caused actual financial losses in order to prevail in a legal malpractice suit. In the case of a lawsuit this has to be proven with evidence like expert testimony or correspondence between the client and attorney. A plaintiff must also prove that a reasonable attorney could have prevented the harm caused by the negligence of the lawyer. This is known as proximate causation.

Malpractice occurs in many ways. The most frequent types of malpractice include failing to meet a deadline, such as the statute of limitations, failing to conduct a conflict check or other due diligence of the case, not applying law to a client's situation and breaching a fiduciary responsibility (i.e. mixing trust funds with an attorney's personal accounts) and mishandling a case, and failing to communicate with a client.

In the majority of medical malpractice cases the plaintiff is seeking compensatory damages. These compensations are intended to compensate the victim for expenses out of pocket and losses, such as hospital and medical bills, the cost of equipment to aid in recovery and lost wages. Victims can also seek non-economic damages such as discomfort and pain, loss of enjoyment of their lives, as well as emotional suffering.

Legal malpractice cases often involve claims for compensatory or punitive damages. The former compensates a victim for losses resulting from the negligence of the attorney, whereas the latter is designed to discourage future misconduct by the defendant.