Medical Malpractice Lawsuits
Attorneys hold a fiduciary relationship with their clients and are required to behave with care, diligence and ability. Attorneys make mistakes just like any other professional.
The mistakes made by an attorney constitutes malpractice. To prove legal malpractice, an aggrieved party must show the breach of duty, duty, causation and damage. Let's review each of these aspects.
Duty-Free
Medical professionals and doctors take an oath to use their expertise and knowledge 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 assist you determine if your doctor's actions violated the duty of care, and if these breaches caused injury or illness to you.
To establish a duty of care, your lawyer will need to show that a medical professional has an legal relationship with you that owed you a fiduciary responsibility to exercise a reasonable level of expertise and care. This can be demonstrated by eyewitness testimony of witnesses, doctor-patient documents and expert testimony from doctors with similar education, experience, and training.
Your lawyer will also need to establish that the medical professional breached their duty to care by failing to adhere to the accepted standards in their field. This is often called negligence. Your lawyer will compare the defendant's behavior to what a reasonable person would do in the same circumstance.
Your lawyer must prove that the defendant's lapse of duty directly caused the loss or injury you suffered. This is known as causation. Your attorney will rely on evidence such as your doctor-patient documents, witness statements and expert testimony to show that the defendant's inability to meet the standard of care in your case was the direct cause of your injury or loss.
Breach
A doctor has a responsibility of treatment to his patients that conforms to the highest standards of medical practice. If a doctor fails meet these standards and this results in injury, then negligence and medical malpractice might occur. Expert testimony from medical professionals who have similar training, certifications or experience can help determine the quality of care for a specific situation. Federal and state laws, as well as institute policies, determine what doctors are required to do for certain types of patients.
To win a malpractice case it must be proven that the doctor breached his or his duty of care and that this breach was the direct cause of injury. In legal terms, this is known as the causation component and it is vital that it is established. For instance when a broken arm requires an x-ray, the doctor must properly fix the arm and place it in a cast for proper healing. If the doctor failed to do this and the patient was left with an irreparable loss of use of the arm, then malpractice could have occurred.
Causation
Attorney malpractice claims are based on evidence that demonstrates that the attorney's mistakes caused financial losses to the client. For example when a lawyer does not file a lawsuit within the statute of limitations, leading to the case being lost forever and the victim can bring legal malpractice actions.
However, it's important to recognize that not all errors made by lawyers are a sign of
malpractice attorney. The mistakes that involve strategy and planning do not typically constitute malpractice and lawyers have a lot of latitude in making judgment calls so long as they are reasonable.
The law also allows lawyers an enormous amount of discretion to not conduct discovery on behalf of clients provided that the failure was not unreasonable or a result of negligence. Failing to discover important details or documents like medical or witness statements or medical reports, could be an instance of legal malpractice. Other examples of
malpractice include a failure to add certain defendants or claims such as failing to file a survival count in a wrongful death lawsuit or the frequent and extended inability to communicate with the client.
It's also important that it has to be proven that if it weren't the negligence of the lawyer the plaintiff would have won the underlying case. Otherwise, the plaintiff's claim for malpractice will be denied. This requirement makes bringing legal malpractice claims difficult. For this reason, it's important to find an experienced attorney to represent you.
Damages
To prevail in a legal malpractice case, the plaintiff must show actual financial losses that result from an attorney's actions. This can be proven in a lawsuit with evidence such as expert testimony, correspondence between the client and attorney or billing records, and other records. In addition the plaintiff must demonstrate that a reasonable lawyer would have avoided the damage caused by the attorney's negligence. This is known as the proximate cause.
Malpractice can occur in many different ways. Some of the most common types of malpractice include the failure to meet a deadline, including the statute of limitation, failure to conduct a conflict-check or other due diligence on the case, not applying the law to the client's situation and breaching a fiduciary responsibility (i.e. merging funds from a trust account with an attorney's own accounts or handling a case improperly and not communicating with the client are all examples of malpractice.
Medical malpractice lawsuits typically include claims for compensatory damages. They are awarded to the victim in exchange for the out-of-pocket expenses and losses, such as hospital and medical bills, the cost of equipment required to aid in recovering, and lost wages. Victims can also seek non-economic damages such as discomfort and pain and loss of enjoyment their lives, and emotional stress.
Legal malpractice cases usually involve claims for compensatory and punitive damages. The former compensates victims for the loss resulting from the negligence of the attorney, whereas the latter is intended to deter future malpractice by the defendant.