Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys have a fiduciary duty to their clients and are required to act with a degree of diligence, skill and care. But, as with all professionals, attorneys make mistakes.

Not every mistake made by an attorney is negligence. To prove legal negligence the aggrieved party must prove the breach of duty, obligation, causation, as well as damage. Let's take a look at each one of these aspects.

Duty-Free

Medical professionals and doctors swear an oath to use their knowledge and expertise to treat patients, not to cause further harm. A patient's legal right to receive compensation for injuries resulting from medical malpractice is based on the concept of the duty of care. Your attorney can determine if the actions of your doctor breached the duty of care and if these breaches resulted in injury or illness.

To prove a duty to care, your lawyer needs to show that a medical professional had an official relationship with you and owed you a fiduciary responsibility to exercise reasonable expertise and care. Establishing that this relationship existed could require evidence like your records of your doctor-patient relationship or eyewitness testimony, as well as expert testimony from doctors with similar experiences, education and training.

Your lawyer must also demonstrate that the medical professional breached their duty of care by failing to adhere to the accepted standards of care in their area of expertise. This is often referred to as negligence. Your lawyer will examine the defendant's actions with what a reasonable person would perform in the same situation.

Your lawyer must prove that the defendant's breach of duty directly resulted in the loss or injury you suffered. This is known as causation, and your attorney will rely on evidence like your doctor-patient documents, witness statements, and expert testimony to prove that the defendant's failure to adhere to the standards of care in your case was a direct cause of your injury or loss.

Breach

A doctor is bound by a duty of care to his patients which corresponds to professional medical standards. If a doctor fails to adhere to these standards and fails to do so results in injury, negligence and medical malpractice might occur. Typically experts' testimony from medical professionals who have similar training, expertise, certifications and experience will help determine what the appropriate standard of care is in a particular case. State and federal laws as well as institute policies also help define what doctors must do for certain types of patients.

To win a malpractice case it must be proven that the doctor violated his or duty of care and that the breach was the direct cause of injury. This is referred to in legal terms as the causation element and it is essential to establish. If a doctor needs to perform an x-ray on an injured arm, they must place the arm in a cast and then correctly set it. If the doctor was unable to perform this task and the patient suffered an unavoidable loss of function of that arm, then malpractice could have occurred.

Causation

Attorney malpractice claims rely on the evidence that proves that the lawyer's errors caused financial losses to the client. For example the lawyer does not file a lawsuit within the statute of limitations, leading to the case being lost forever the party who suffered damages could bring legal malpractice lawsuits.

However, it's important to realize that not all mistakes made by lawyers are a sign of mistakes that constitute malpractice. Strategies and planning errors are not typically considered to be negligence. Attorneys have a broad range of discretion in making decisions, as long as they're rational.

Likewise, the law gives attorneys considerable leeway to fail to conduct a discovery process on the behalf of clients, so long as it was not negligent or unreasonable. The failure to discover crucial documents or facts, such as medical or witness statements, is a potential example of legal malpractice. Other instances of malpractice include the inability to add certain defendants or claims, such as not noticing a survival count in the case of wrongful death or the constant failure to communicate with clients.

It is also important to consider the necessity for the plaintiff to demonstrate that, if it weren't for the lawyer's negligent conduct they would have prevailed. In the event that it is not, the plaintiff's claim for malpractice will be denied. This makes the process of bringing legal malpractice lawsuits difficult. It's essential to choose an experienced attorney to represent you.

Damages

To prevail in a legal malpractice lawsuit, the plaintiff must prove actual financial losses resulting from an attorney's actions. This must be shown in a lawsuit using evidence such as expert testimony, correspondence between client and attorney along with billing records and other records. In addition, the plaintiff must prove that a reasonable lawyer could have prevented the harm that was caused by the attorney's negligence. This is known as the proximate cause.

The causes of malpractice vary. Some of the more 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 the case, not applying law to a client's situation and breaching a fiduciary responsibility (i.e. commingling trust account funds with personal attorney accounts), mishandling of an instance, and not communicating with the client.

In the majority of medical malpractice cases, the plaintiff will seek compensation damages. These compensations compensate the victim for the cost of out-of-pocket expenses and losses, such as hospital and medical bills, equipment costs to aid in recovery, and lost wages. Victims are also able to claim non-economic damages like discomfort and pain or loss of enjoyment in their lives, as well as emotional stress.

Legal malpractice cases typically involve claims for compensatory and punitive damages. The former compensates the victim for losses caused by the negligence of the attorney, whereas the latter is designed to discourage future malpractice by the defendant.