Medical Malpractice Lawsuits
Attorneys have a fiduciary obligation with their clients and are expected to behave with diligence, care and skill. Attorneys make mistakes just like any other professional.
Some mistakes made by lawyers are considered to be malpractice. To demonstrate legal malpractice, an victim must prove obligation, breach, causation and damage. Let's look at each one of these aspects.
Duty
Doctors and medical professionals take the oath of using their expertise and knowledge to treat patients and not cause additional harm. Duty of care is the basis for the right of patients to receive compensation when they suffer injuries due to medical negligence. Your attorney will determine if the actions of your doctor breached the duty of care and if the breach caused you injury or illness.
To prove a duty of care, your lawyer has to show that a medical professional has a legal relationship with you, in which they owed you a fiduciary responsibility to perform their duties with an acceptable level of competence and care. Proving that this relationship existed may require evidence, such as the records of your doctor-patient eyewitness accounts and experts from doctors with similar experience, education and training.
Your lawyer will also need to demonstrate that the medical professional violated their duty of caring in not adhering to the accepted standards of their field. This is commonly referred to by the term negligence. Your attorney will compare what the defendant did with what a reasonable person would do in a similar situation.
Your lawyer must also demonstrate that the defendant's negligence caused direct injury or loss. This is known as causation, and your attorney will use evidence such as your doctor-patient documents, witness statements, and expert testimony to show that the defendant's failure to adhere to the standards of care in your case was a direct cause of your injury or loss.
Breach
A doctor has a duty of treatment to his patients that is in line with professional medical standards. If a physician fails to meet the standards, and the failure results in an injury that is medically negligent, negligence could result. Typically expert testimony from medical professionals with similar training, skills, certifications and experience will aid in determining what the best standard of treatment should be in a specific situation. Federal and state laws and institute policies also help define what doctors must provide for specific kinds of patients.
To prevail in a malpractice case it must be proven that the doctor breached his or their duty of care, and that this breach was a direct cause of an injury. In legal terms, this is called the causation factor and it is crucial to establish. If a physician has to perform an x-ray on an injured arm, they have to put the arm in a cast and correctly set it. If the doctor is unable to perform this, and the patient loses their use of the arm, malpractice may have taken place.
Causation
Attorney malpractice claims rely on evidence that demonstrates that the attorney's errors caused financial losses to the client. For example when a lawyer does not file an action within the timeframe of limitations, which results in the case being lost forever the person who was injured could bring legal
malpractice lawsuits.
However, it's crucial to be aware that not all mistakes made by lawyers are a sign of illegal. Strategies and planning mistakes do not usually constitute
malpractice attorney. Attorneys have a broad range of discretion to make decisions, as long as they're in the right place.
Additionally, the law grants attorneys the right to perform discovery on behalf of a client, so provided that the decision was not unreasonable or negligent. Legal malpractice can be triggered through the failure to uncover important documents or facts, like medical reports or witness statements. Other examples of malpractice include a failure to add certain claims or defendants such as failing to make a survival claim in a wrongful death lawsuit,
malpractice lawsuits or the repeated and extended failure to contact clients.
It is also important to remember the necessity for the plaintiff to prove that, if not due to the lawyer's negligent behavior, they would have prevailed. The claim of
malpractice law firms by the plaintiff will be rejected in the event that it is not proved. This makes the process of bringing legal malpractice lawsuits difficult. It is important to employ an experienced attorney.
Damages
In order to prevail in a legal malpractice suit, a plaintiff must demonstrate actual financial losses incurred by the actions of an attorney. This has to be demonstrated in a lawsuit through evidence such as expert testimony, correspondence between client and attorney along with billing records and other documentation. A plaintiff must also prove that a reasonable attorney would have prevented the harm caused by the negligence of the lawyer. This is known as proximate causation.
Malpractice occurs in many ways. Some of the most common types of malpractice include: failing to meet a deadline, including a statute of limitations, failure to perform a conflict check or other due diligence of the case, not applying the law to the client's situation, breaching a fiduciary duty (i.e. mixing trust funds with personal attorney accounts) or a mishandling of the case, and failing to communicate with clients.
Medical malpractice lawsuits typically include claims for compensatory damages. These compensations are intended to compensate the victim for out-of pocket expenses and expenses like medical and hospitals bills, the cost of equipment to aid in recovery and lost wages. Victims may also claim non-economic damages like discomfort and pain as well as loss of enjoyment from their lives,
Malpractice Lawsuits as well as emotional stress.
In many legal malpractice cases, there are claims for punitive and compensatory damages. The former compensates a victim for the loss resulting from the attorney's negligence, while the latter is designed to discourage future malpractice by the defendant.