Medical Malpractice Lawsuits
Attorneys are bound by a fiduciary obligation to their clients and they are expected act with a degree of diligence, skill and care. Attorneys make mistakes just like any other professional.
The mistakes made by an attorney can be considered malpractice. To prove negligence in a legal sense the victim must demonstrate the breach of duty, obligation, causation, and damage. Let's look at each of these components.
Duty-Free
Doctors and medical professionals take an oath to apply their skills and experience to treat patients, not cause additional harm. The legal right of a patient to compensation for injuries sustained from medical malpractice is based on the notion of duty of care. Your lawyer can help determine whether or not your doctor's actions breached this duty of care, and whether these breaches caused injuries or illness to you.
To establish 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 act with reasonable competence and care. This can be proved by eyewitness testimony, doctor-patient documents and expert testimony from doctors with similar education, experience and training.
Your lawyer will also need to show that the medical professional breached their duty of caring by failing to follow the accepted standards in their area of expertise. This is usually described as negligence. Your lawyer will be able to compare the actions of the defendant to what a reasonable person would do in the same situation.
Your lawyer will also need to prove that the defendant's negligence directly caused your loss or injury. This is referred to as causation, and your attorney will use evidence such as your doctor-patient documents, witness statements and expert testimony to prove that the defendant's failure 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 for his patients that conforms to the highest standards of medical practice. If a doctor fails to meet those standards, and the resulting failure causes an injury, then medical malpractice or negligence may occur. Typically expert testimony from medical professionals who have similar training, expertise and experience, as well as certifications and certificates will assist in determining what the minimum standard of care is in a particular situation. Federal and state laws, along with institute policies, help define what doctors are expected to do for certain types of patients.
To prevail in a malpractice lawsuit it must be proven that the doctor violated his or their duty of care,
Malpractice lawsuit and that the breach was the direct cause of an injury. This is referred to in legal terms as the causation element, and it is vital to establish. For example 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 is unable to perform this, and the patient is left with a permanent loss of usage of the arm, then malpractice may have taken place.
Causation
Attorney malpractice claims are based on evidence that the attorney's errors caused financial losses to the client. For example the lawyer fails to file an action within the timeframe of limitations, resulting in the case being lost for ever, the injured party could bring legal malpractice lawsuits.
It is important to recognize that not all mistakes made by attorneys are wrong. Mistakes in strategy and planning are not generally considered to be malpractice and lawyers have the ability to make decisions based on their judgments as long as they are reasonable.
The law also allows lawyers ample discretion to refrain from performing discovery on behalf of clients as long as the error was not unreasonable or negligence. Failing to discover important information or documents, such as medical reports or statements of witnesses, is a potential example of legal malpractice. Other instances of malpractice include the failure to include certain defendants or claims, like the mistake of not remembering a survival number for a wrongful-death case or the constant failure to communicate with clients.
It's also important that it has to be proven that, had it not been the lawyer's negligence, the plaintiff would have won the underlying case. Otherwise, the plaintiff's claim for malpractice will be denied. This requirement makes the process of bringing legal
malpractice lawsuits difficult. Therefore, it's important to find an experienced attorney to represent you.
Damages
A plaintiff must prove that the attorney's actions caused actual financial losses to prevail in a legal
malpractice lawsuit. In a lawsuit, this must be proven with evidence such as expert testimony and correspondence between the attorney and client. A plaintiff must also demonstrate that a reasonable lawyer could have prevented the damage caused by the lawyer's negligence. This is known as proximate cause.
Malpractice can occur in many different ways. The most frequent kinds of malpractice are failing to meet a deadline, including the statute of limitation, failure to conduct a check on conflicts or other due diligence on the case, not applying law to a client's situation or breaking a fiduciary duty (i.e. the commingling of trust account funds with personal attorney accounts) or mishandling the case, and not communicating with a client.
Medical malpractice suits typically involve claims for compensatory damages. These compensate the victim for the expenses out of pocket and losses,
malpractice lawsuit such as medical and hospital bills, costs of equipment needed to aid in healing, as well as lost wages. Victims can also seek non-economic damages, such as discomfort and pain and loss of enjoyment their lives, as well as emotional anxiety.
Legal
malpractice lawyer cases typically involve claims for compensatory as well as punitive damages. The former compensates victims for the losses caused by the negligence of the attorney, while the latter is designed to deter future malpractice by the defendant.