Medical Malpractice Lawsuits
Attorneys have a fiduciary connection with their clients and are expected to act with care, diligence and
Malpractice competence. But, as with all professionals, attorneys make mistakes.
Not every mistake made by an attorney constitutes malpractice. To prove legal malpractice, an victim must prove duty, breach, causation and damages. Let's look at each of these elements.
Duty-Free
Doctors and other medical professionals swear to use their training and experience to help patients and not cause further harm. The legal right of a patient to compensation for injuries suffered from medical malpractice hinges on the concept of duty of care. Your attorney can help you determine if your doctor's actions violated the duty of care, and if those breaches caused injury or illness to you.
Your lawyer must demonstrate that the medical professional owed you the duty of a fiduciary to perform with reasonable competence and care. This can be proved by eyewitness testimony, doctor-patient documents and expert testimony from doctors with similar educational, experience and training.
Your lawyer will also need to prove that the medical professional violated their duty of caring by not adhering to the accepted standards of their field. This is often called negligence. Your lawyer will evaluate what the defendant did to what a reasonable individual would do in a similar situation.
Your lawyer will also need to prove that the breach of the defendant's duty directly caused your injury or loss. This is known as causation, and your attorney will use evidence like your medical documents, witness statements and expert testimony to demonstrate that the defendant's failure to uphold the standards of care in your case was the direct cause of your injury or loss.
Breach
A doctor is obligated to patients to perform duties of care that reflect professional medical standards. If a doctor does not meet those standards and this causes injury, then negligence and medical malpractice might occur. Typically the testimony of medical professionals who have similar training, expertise and experience, as well as certifications and certificates will help determine what the appropriate standard of care is in a specific situation. State and federal laws as well as institute policies also help determine what doctors should perform for specific types of patients.
To win a malpractice case, it must be shown that the doctor breached his or her duty of care and that the breach was the direct cause of injury. In legal terms, this is called the causation component and it is crucial that it is established. If a doctor has to conduct an x-ray examination of an injured arm, they must place the arm in a cast and then correctly place it. If the doctor was unable to do so and the patient was left with permanent loss of use of that arm, then malpractice could have occurred.
Causation
Attorney malpractice claims rely on evidence that demonstrates that the attorney's errors resulted in financial losses for the client. For instance the lawyer fails to file a lawsuit within the statute of limitations, which results in the case being lost for ever, the injured party can bring legal malpractice actions.
However, it's important to realize that not all errors made by attorneys constitute
malpractice lawsuit. Errors involving strategy and planning do not typically constitute malpractice, and attorneys have the ability to make decisions based on their judgments as long as they're reasonable.
The law also allows lawyers considerable latitude to not perform discovery on behalf of a client in the event that the failure was not unreasonable or negligent. Failing to discover important facts or documents like medical reports or statements of witnesses or medical reports, could be an instance of legal malpractice. Other examples of malpractice include a inability to include certain claims or defendants such as failing to make a survival claim in a wrongful death case or the frequent and long-running failure to communicate with the client.
It's also important that it must be proven that, had it not been for the lawyer's negligence, the plaintiff would have won the case. In the event that it is not, the plaintiff's claim for malpractice will be denied. This makes bringing legal malpractice claims difficult. It is crucial to find an experienced attorney.
Damages
To prevail in a legal
malpractice law firms lawsuit, the plaintiff must show actual financial losses that result from an attorney's actions. In a lawsuit, this has to be demonstrated using evidence, such as expert testimony and correspondence between the attorney and the client. In addition, the plaintiff must prove that a reasonable lawyer would have avoided the harm that was caused by the negligence of the attorney. This is referred to as the proximate cause.
Malpractice can occur in many different ways. Some of the more common types of malpractice include: failing to meet a deadline, such as a statute of limitations, a failure to conduct a check on conflicts or other due diligence on the case, not applying law to a client's circumstance or breaking a fiduciary duty (i.e. merging funds from a trust account with an attorney's account or handling a case improperly and not communicating with the client are all examples of malpractice.
Medical malpractice suits typically involve claims for compensation damages. The compensations pay for the cost of out-of-pocket expenses and losses, such as hospital and medical bills, the cost of equipment to help recover and lost wages. In addition, victims can seek non-economic damages, like suffering and suffering or loss of enjoyment life, and emotional distress.
Legal malpractice cases typically involve claims for compensatory or punitive damages. The former compensates the victim for the loss resulting from the negligence of an attorney, while the latter is intended to deter future malpractice by the defendant.