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Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys have a fiduciary obligation with their clients and are required to act with diligence, care and expertise. Attorneys make mistakes, just like any other professional.

The mistakes made by an attorney can be considered malpractice lawyer. To prove legal malpractice, an aggrieved person must demonstrate duty, breach, causation and damages. Let's take a look at each of these aspects.

Duty

Doctors and other medical professionals swear to apply their education and expertise to treat patients and not to cause harm to others. The legal right of a patient to compensation for injuries suffered from medical malpractice hinges on the notion of the duty of care. Your attorney can determine if your doctor's actions violated the duty of care and if those breaches resulted in your injury or illness.

To establish a duty of care, your lawyer will need to show that a medical professional had an legal relationship with you and owed you a fiduciary responsibility to exercise a reasonable level of expertise and care. This relationship can be established through eyewitness testimony, doctor-patient reports and expert testimony from doctors with similar education, experience and training.

Your lawyer will also need to demonstrate that the medical professional breached their duty to care by failing to follow the accepted standards of their field. This is typically referred to by the term negligence. Your attorney will compare what the defendant did to what a reasonable individual would do in a similar situation.

Your lawyer must also show that the defendant's breach directly contributed to your loss or injury. This is known as causation, and your attorney will rely on evidence such as your medical documents, witness statements and expert testimony to show that the defendant's inability to uphold the standard of care in your case was the direct cause of your injury or loss.

Breach

A doctor has a duty to patients of care that adhere to professional standards in medical practice. If a doctor does not adhere to these standards and this results in injury, negligence and medical malpractice might occur. Typically expert testimony from medical professionals with similar training, skills or certifications will aid in determining what the best standard of care is in a particular situation. Federal and state laws, as well as policies of the institute, help define what doctors are required to do for certain types of patients.

To win a malpractice case the case must be proved that the doctor violated his or duty of care and that the breach was a direct cause of injury. This is referred to in legal terms as the causation element and it is imperative to establish. For example an injured arm requires an xray, the doctor has to properly fix the arm and place it in a cast to ensure proper healing. If the doctor failed to do this and the patient was left with a permanent loss of the use of the arm, then malpractice could have occurred.

Causation

Attorney malpractice claims are based on the evidence that proves that the lawyer's mistakes caused financial losses to the client. For instance the lawyer fails to file a lawsuit within the prescribed time of limitations, leading to the case being lost for ever the person who was injured can bring legal malpractice actions.

It is crucial to be aware that not all mistakes made by lawyers constitute malpractice. Errors involving strategy and planning do not typically constitute malpractice attorneys have lots of freedom in making judgment calls so long as they are reasonable.

The law also grants attorneys considerable latitude to not perform discovery on behalf of a client as long as the reason for the delay was not unreasonable or negligent. Inability to find important information or documents, such as medical reports or statements of witnesses could be a sign 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 repeated and persistent inability to contact clients.

It's also important to keep in mind that it must be proved 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. For this reason, it's crucial to hire an experienced attorney to represent you.

Damages

To prevail in a legal malpractice case, the plaintiff must prove actual financial losses that result from an attorney's actions. This should be proved in a lawsuit by utilizing evidence such as expert testimony, correspondence between the client and attorney as well as billing records and other evidence. In addition the plaintiff must show that a reasonable lawyer would have avoided the harm caused by the negligence of the attorney. This is called proximate causation.

Malpractice can occur in many different ways. Some of the most common types of malpractice include: failing to adhere to a deadline, which includes a statute of limitations, failing to conduct a conflict-check or other due diligence on a case, improperly applying the law to the client's situation or breaking a fiduciary duty (i.e. mixing funds from a trust account with an attorney's own accounts, mishandling a case and not communicating with the client are all examples of malpractice.

Medical malpractice lawsuits typically include claims for compensatory damages. These compensate the victim for expenses out of pocket and losses, such as hospital and medical bills, costs of equipment needed to aid in healing, as well as lost wages. In addition, victims can be able to claim non-economic damages like pain and suffering or loss of enjoyment life and emotional suffering.

Legal malpractice cases often include claims for compensatory and punitive damages. The former compensates the victim for the losses caused by the negligence of the attorney, while the latter is designed to deter future malpractice by the defendant.