Medical
Malpractice LawsuitsAttorneys have a fiduciary responsibilities to their clients, and they must act with a degree of diligence, skill and care. Attorneys make mistakes, just like every other professional.
The mistakes made by an attorney can be considered malpractice. To prove legal malpractice, an aggrieved person must demonstrate the breach of duty, duty, causation and damages. Let's take a look at each of these elements.
Duty
Doctors and medical professionals take the oath of using their skills and experience to treat patients, and not to cause further harm. The legal right of a patient to be compensated for injuries sustained from medical
malpractice hinges on the concept of the duty of care. 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 to care, your lawyer must to prove that a medical professional has a legal relationship with you that owed you a fiduciary responsibility to act with a reasonable level of competence and care. Establishing that this relationship existed may require evidence such as the records of your doctor and patient or eyewitness testimony, as well as expert testimony from doctors with similar knowledge, experience, and education.
Your lawyer must also show that the medical professional breached their duty of care by failing to adhere to the accepted standards of practice in their field. This is often referred to as negligence. Your lawyer will examine the defendant's actions to what a reasonable person would perform in the same situation.
Your lawyer must also prove that the breach of the defendant's duty directly contributed to your injury or loss. This is referred to as causation. Your lawyer will make use of evidence like your medical documents, witness statements and expert testimony to prove that the defendant's inability to meet the standard of care in your case was a direct cause of your injury or loss.
Breach
A doctor has a duty to patients of care that conform to the highest standards of medical professionalism. If a physician fails to meet these standards and this causes injury, then negligence and medical malpractice might occur. Expert evidence from medical professionals who have similar training, certifications or experience can help determine the quality of care in a particular situation. Federal and state laws and institute policies can also be used to determine what doctors are required to provide for specific kinds of patients.
To win a malpractice case the case must be proved that the doctor breached his or her duty of care and that the breach was a direct cause of an injury. This is referred to in legal terms as the causation element, and it is imperative to establish. For example in the event that a damaged arm requires an xray the doctor has to properly set the arm and place it in a cast to ensure proper healing. If the physician failed to do this and the patient suffered a permanent loss of use of that arm, then malpractice could have occurred.
Causation
Attorney malpractice claims rely on evidence that shows 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 party who suffered damages can bring legal malpractice actions.
However, it's important to recognize that not all errors made by lawyers constitute malpractice. Mistakes in strategy and planning do not typically constitute malpractice attorneys are given lots of freedom to make judgment calls as long as they are reasonable.
The law also gives attorneys an enormous amount of discretion to not conduct discovery on behalf of a client provided that the error was not unreasonable or a result of negligence. Failing to discover important information or documents, such as medical reports or witness statements could be a sign of legal malpractice. Other examples of malpractice include a inability to include certain claims or defendants such as omitting to include a survival count in a wrongful-death case or the continual and prolonged inability to communicate with clients.
It is also important to remember the necessity for the plaintiff to show that if it wasn't for the lawyer's negligent conduct they would have prevailed. If not, the plaintiff's claims for malpractice will be rejected. This requirement makes bringing legal malpractice claims difficult. It is crucial to find an experienced attorney.
Damages
To win a legal malpractice suit, the plaintiff must prove actual financial losses incurred by the actions of an attorney. This should be proved in a lawsuit using evidence such as expert testimony, correspondence between the client and attorney or billing records, and other evidence. A plaintiff must also prove that a reasonable attorney 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 types of malpractice include the failure to meet a deadline, including the statute of limitations, failing to conduct a conflict-check or other due diligence of the case, not applying law to a client's circumstance and breaching a fiduciary responsibility (i.e. the commingling of funds from a trust account an attorney's own accounts as well as not communicating with the client are all examples of malpractice.
Medical
malpractice lawsuits typically involve claims for compensatory damages. They compensate the victim for out-of-pocket expenses and losses, like medical and hospital bills, the cost of equipment that aids in healing, as well as lost wages. Victims may also claim non-economic damages, such as pain and discomfort as well as loss of enjoyment from their lives, as well as emotional anxiety.
Legal malpractice cases usually include claims for compensatory and punitive damages. The former compensates the victim for losses resulting from the negligence of the attorney, while the latter is designed to deter future malpractice by the defendant.