Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys hold a fiduciary relationship with their clients and are required to conduct themselves with diligence, care and expertise. Attorneys make mistakes, just like any other professional.

Every mistake made by an attorney can be considered malpractice. To prove legal malpractice, an aggrieved party has to prove the breach of duty, duty, causation and damages. Let's look at each of these aspects.

Duty

Medical professionals and doctors take the oath of using their skill and training to treat patients and not to cause further harm. A patient's legal right to compensation for injuries suffered from medical malpractice hinges on the concept of the duty of care. Your lawyer can help determine whether or not the actions of your doctor violated this duty of care, and whether the breach caused injuries or illness to you.

Your lawyer must demonstrate that the medical professional in question owed you a fiduciary duty to act with reasonable competence and care. This relationship may be proven by eyewitness testimony, doctor-patient records and expert testimony of doctors with similar education, experience, and training.

Your lawyer will also need to establish that the medical professional breached their duty of caring by failing to follow the accepted standards of their area of expertise. This is commonly referred to by the term negligence. Your attorney will compare the actions of the defendant to what a reasonable person would do in a similar situation.

Your lawyer must also demonstrate that the defendant's negligence directly contributed to your injury or loss. This is referred to as causation. Your lawyer will rely on evidence like your medical or patient records, witness testimony and expert testimony, to prove that the defendant’s failure to adhere to the standard of care was the primary cause of the injury or loss to you.

Breach

A doctor has a duty of care to his patients that reflects professional medical standards. If a physician fails to adhere to these standards and this results in injury, then negligence and medical malpractice might occur. Expert witness testimony from medical professionals that have similar training, certificates as well as experience and qualifications can help determine the quality of care in a particular situation. State and federal laws as well as institute policies also help define what doctors must do for specific types of patients.

To win a malpractice case the case must be proved that the doctor violated his or his duty of care and that the breach was a direct cause of an injury. In legal terms, this is referred to as the causation component and it is vital to establish. For example, if a broken arm requires an x-ray the doctor has to properly place the arm and put it in a cast for proper healing. If the physician failed to do so and the patient suffered a permanent loss of the use of the arm, then malpractice may have occurred.

Causation

Attorney malpractice claims are based on evidence that shows the attorney's errors resulted in financial losses for the client. For instance when a lawyer fails to file a lawsuit within the prescribed time of limitations, which results in the case being lost for ever and the victim can bring legal malpractice actions.

It is crucial to be aware that not all errors made by lawyers are a sign of malpractice. Mistakes in strategy and planning do not typically constitute malpractice, and attorneys have the ability to make decisions based on their judgments as long as they are reasonable.

In addition, the law allows attorneys a lot of discretion to conduct discovery on behalf of a client's behalf, as long as it was not unreasonable or negligent. Failure to uncover important details or malpractice documents, such as medical reports or witness statements, is a potential example of legal malpractice. Other examples of malpractice include a inability to include certain claims or defendants for example, like forgetting to submit a survival count in a wrongful-death case or the frequent and prolonged failure to communicate with the client.

It is also important to consider the fact that the plaintiff has to prove that if not the lawyer's negligence they would have won their case. Otherwise, the plaintiff's claim for malpractice will be denied. This requirement makes bringing legal malpractice claims difficult. It is important to employ an experienced attorney.

Damages

In order to prevail in a legal malpractice lawsuit the plaintiff must prove actual financial losses resulting from the actions of the attorney. In the case of a lawsuit this has to be proven through evidence, like expert testimony or correspondence between the attorney and the client. In addition the plaintiff must show that a reasonable lawyer could have prevented the harm that was caused by the negligence of the attorney. This is referred to as proximate causation.

Malpractice can occur in many different ways. The most frequent types of malpractice include failing to adhere to a deadline, which includes a statute of limitations, malpractice failure to conduct a conflict check or any other due diligence on a case, improperly applying the law to a client's case and breaching a fiduciary responsibility (i.e. Commingling funds from a trust account with an attorney's own accounts, mishandling a case and not communicating with the client are all examples of malpractice.

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

Legal malpractice cases often involve claims for compensatory or punitive damages. The former compensates a victim for losses caused by the negligence of an attorney, while the latter is intended to deter future malpractice by the defendant.