Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys are bound by a fiduciary obligation to their clients and are required to act with a degree of diligence, skill and care. However, like all professionals attorneys make mistakes.

Some errors made by attorneys are a result of malpractice lawyer. To establish legal malpractice, the aggrieved party has to prove the breach of duty, duty, causation and damages. Let's review each of these aspects.

Duty

Medical professionals and doctors swear an oath that they will use their skills and experience to treat patients, and not causing further harm. Duty of care is the basis for patients' right to compensation if they are injured by medical malpractice. Your attorney will determine if your doctor's actions breached the duty of medical care and whether these violations resulted in injury or illness.

To establish a duty of care, your lawyer has to establish that a medical professional has an agreement with you that had a fiduciary obligation to exercise a reasonable level of expertise and care. Establishing that this relationship existed could require evidence like your records of your doctor-patient relationship, eyewitness statements and 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 not submitting to the accepted standards of practice in their area of expertise. This is often called negligence, and your attorney will compare the defendant's behavior to what a reasonable person would do in the same situation.

Finally, your lawyer must prove that the defendant's breach of duty directly caused your loss or injury. This is referred to 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 inability to uphold the standard of care in your case was a direct cause of your injury or loss.

Breach

A doctor has a responsibility of care to his patients which conforms to the highest standards of medical practice. If a physician fails to meet these standards and this results in injury, then medical malpractice or negligence could occur. Typically, expert testimony from medical professionals with similar training, skills or certifications will help determine what the standard of care should be in a specific situation. State and federal laws as well as institute policies can also be used to define what doctors must perform for specific types of patients.

To prevail in a malpractice attorney lawsuit, it must be proven that the doctor violated his or her duty to care and that this violation was a direct reason for an injury. In legal terms, this is referred to as the causation element and it is essential that it is established. For example an injured arm requires an xray the doctor must properly set the arm and then place it in a cast for proper healing. If the doctor was unable to perform this task and the patient was left with an irreparable loss of the use of the arm, then malpractice could have occurred.

Causation

Attorney malpractice claims rely on evidence that demonstrates that the attorney's mistakes resulted in financial losses for the client. For example, if a lawyer fails to file an action within the timeframe of limitations, leading to the case being lost for ever, the injured party can file legal malpractice claims.

However, it's important to realize that not all errors made by attorneys constitute mistakes that constitute malpractice. Strategies and planning errors aren't usually considered to be a sign of negligence. Attorneys have a wide range of discretion to make decisions as long as they're rational.

Likewise, the law gives attorneys a wide range of options to refuse to conduct discovery on the behalf of their clients, as long as it was not negligent or unreasonable. Legal malpractice can be triggered through the failure to uncover important documents or facts, Vimeo like medical reports or witness statements. Other instances of malpractice include inability to include certain claims or defendants for example, like forgetting to submit a survival count in a case of wrongful death or the frequent and persistent failure to contact a client.

It's also important that it has to be proven that but for the lawyer's negligence, the plaintiff would have won the underlying case. The claim of the plaintiff for malpractice is deemed invalid when it isn't proven. This makes it difficult to bring a legal malpractice claim. It is essential to choose an experienced attorney.

Damages

A plaintiff must prove that the attorney's actions have caused actual financial losses to prevail in a legal malpractice lawsuit. In the case of a lawsuit this has to be proven with evidence like expert testimony or correspondence between the attorney and client. The plaintiff must also show that a reasonable lawyer could have prevented the damage caused by the lawyer's negligence. This is known as proximate cause.

It can happen in a variety of ways. Some of the most common mistakes are: failing to meet a deadline or statute of limitations; failing to perform the necessary conflict checks on an instance; applying the law improperly to a client's circumstances; and breaching the fiduciary duty (i.e. Commingling funds from a trust account an attorney's own accounts or handling a case improperly and not communicating with the client are all examples of malpractice.

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

In a lot of legal malpractice cases, there are claims for punitive and compensatory damages. The first is meant to compensate victims for Vimeo losses caused by the attorney's negligence while the latter is meant to discourage future malpractice on the defendant's part.