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Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys have a fiduciary duty to their clients, and are required to act with diligence, skill and care. However, like all professionals attorneys make mistakes.

Every mistake made by an attorney is malpractice lawyers. To prove that legal malpractice has occurred, the victim must prove duty, breach, causation and damage. Let's take a look at each of these components.

Duty-Free

Medical professionals and doctors swear to use their education and experience to help patients and not to cause further harm. The duty of care is the basis for the right of patients to receive compensation if they are injured by medical malpractice. Your attorney can determine if your doctor's actions violated the duty to care and if these breaches resulted in your injury or illness.

To prove a duty to care, your lawyer needs to show that a medical professional had a legal relationship with you, in which they owed you a fiduciary responsibility to act with a reasonable level of expertise and care. This can be proved by eyewitness testimony, physician-patient reports and expert testimony from doctors with similar education, experience and training.

Your lawyer will also have to prove that the medical professional breached their duty to care by not adhering to the accepted standards of their area of expertise. This is typically referred to by the term negligence. Your lawyer will assess what the defendant did to what a reasonable individual would do in the same situation.

In addition, your lawyer must demonstrate that the defendant's breach of duty directly led to damage or loss to you. This is called causation. Your attorney will use evidence, such as your doctor/patient documents, witness testimony and expert testimony, to show that the defendant’s failure to meet the standard of care was the sole cause of your injury or loss to you.

Breach

A doctor is obligated to patients to perform duties of care that conform to the highest standards of medical professionalism. If a doctor does not meet the standards, and the failure results in an injury that is medically negligent, negligence can occur. Expert testimonials from medical professionals who have the same training, certifications as well as experience and qualifications can help determine the level of care in a given situation. State and federal laws as well as institute policies also determine what doctors should do for malpractice lawsuits certain types of patients.

In order to win a malpractice claim, it must be shown that the doctor breached his or their duty of care, and that this breach was the direct cause of an injury. In legal terms, this is known as the causation factor and it is essential that it is established. For example an injured arm requires an xray, the doctor has to properly set the arm and place it in a cast for proper healing. If the doctor is unable to complete this task and the patient loses their the use of the arm, malpractice could have occurred.

Causation

Lawyer malpractice claims are based on evidence that the attorney committed errors that resulted in financial losses to the client. For example the lawyer fails to file a lawsuit within the prescribed time of limitations, leading to the case being lost forever, the injured party could bring legal malpractice lawsuits.

It's important to know that not all mistakes by lawyers are considered to be malpractice. Planning and strategy errors are not always considered to be negligence. Attorneys have a broad range of discretion in making decisions, as long as they're reasonable.

The law also allows attorneys considerable latitude to not perform discovery for a client, so long as the error was not unreasonable or a case of negligence. Inability to find important facts or documents, such as medical reports or statements of witnesses can be a case of legal malpractice. Other examples of malpractice are the inability to add certain defendants or claims, like not noticing a survival count in an unjustly-dead case or the constant failure to communicate with clients.

It is also important to keep in mind the necessity for the plaintiff to show that if it wasn't for the lawyer's negligent conduct they would have prevailed. The claim of the plaintiff for malpractice is rejected when it isn't proven. This requirement makes the process of bringing legal malpractice lawsuits difficult. This is why it's important to find an experienced attorney to represent you.

Damages

A plaintiff must show that the attorney's actions have caused actual financial losses to prevail in a legal malpractice lawsuit. This must be shown in a lawsuit with evidence like expert testimony, correspondence between client and attorney or billing records, and other records. In addition the plaintiff must demonstrate that a reasonable lawyer could have prevented the harm caused by the negligence of the attorney. This is referred to as proximate causation.

It can happen in a variety of ways. Some of the most common types of malpractice include: failing to adhere to a deadline, which includes a statute of limitations, failing to perform a conflict check or other due diligence check on a case, malpractice lawsuits improperly applying law to a client's situation or breaching a fiduciary obligation (i.e. the commingling of trust account funds with personal attorney accounts), mishandling of the case, and not communicating with the client.

Medical malpractice lawsuits typically involve claims for compensation damages. They are awarded to the victim in exchange for the expenses out of pocket and losses, for example medical and hospital bills, costs of equipment that aids in recovery, and loss of wages. Victims can also claim non-economic damages such as pain and discomfort, loss of enjoyment of their lives, as well as emotional anxiety.

Legal malpractice cases usually include claims for compensatory and punitive damages. The former is intended to compensate victims for losses caused by negligence on the part of the attorney while the latter is designed to discourage any future malpractice by the defendant's side.