Medical Malpractice Lawsuits
Attorneys have a fiduciary connection with their clients and are expected to conduct themselves with diligence, care and expertise. Attorneys make mistakes just like any other professional.
A mistake made by an attorney constitutes an act of malpractice attorneys. To demonstrate legal malpractice, an aggrieved party has to prove that there was breach of duty, causation, breach and damage. Let’s take a look at each one of these aspects.
Duty
Medical professionals and doctors swear to use their training and expertise to treat patients and not to cause harm to others. A patient’s legal right to compensation for injuries sustained from medical malpractice hinges on the notion of the duty of care. Your attorney can help you determine if the actions of your doctor violated this duty of care, and whether those breaches caused injuries or illness to you.
Your lawyer must demonstrate that the medical professional in question owed you a fiduciary duty to act with reasonable competence and care. The proof of this relationship may require evidence, such as the records of your doctor and patient eyewitness accounts and expert testimony from doctors with similar experiences, education and training.
Your lawyer will also have to demonstrate that the medical professional breached their duty of care in not adhering to the accepted standards in their area of expertise. This is typically known as negligence. Your lawyer will be able to compare what the defendant did to what a reasonable individual would do in the same situation.
Finally, your lawyer must demonstrate that the defendant’s breach of duty directly resulted in injury or loss to you. This is called causation. Your lawyer will make use of evidence, such as your doctor/patient records, witness testimony and expert testimony, to show that the defendant’s failure to meet the standard of care was the sole cause of the injury or loss to you.
Breach
A doctor owes patients duties of care that are consistent with professional standards in medical practice. If a doctor doesn’t adhere to these standards and the result is an injury and/or medical malpractice, then negligence may occur. Typically the testimony of medical professionals who have the same training, qualifications or certifications will help determine what the appropriate standard of care should be in a particular situation. State and federal laws, as well as guidelines from the institute, help define what doctors are required to do for certain types of patients.
To prevail in a malpractice lawsuit, it must be proven that the doctor acted in violation of his or her duty to care and that the violation was the primary cause of an injury. This is referred to in legal terms as the causation component and it is vital to establish. If a doctor has to obtain an xray of a broken arm, they must put the arm in a cast and correctly place it. If the doctor is unable to perform this, and the patient is left with a permanent loss of the use of their arm, then malpractice attorney (freemaple.today) may have taken place.
Causation
Legal malpractice claims are based on the evidence that the attorney committed errors that resulted in financial losses to the client. For example when a lawyer does not file an action within the timeframe of limitations, resulting in the case being lost forever the person who was injured may bring legal malpractice claims.
However, it’s important to recognize that not all mistakes made by attorneys are malpractice. The mistakes that involve strategy and planning aren’t usually considered to be a violation of the law, and attorneys have plenty of discretion in making judgment calls so long as they’re reasonable.
The law also gives attorneys considerable latitude to not perform discovery on behalf of a client in the event that the reason for the delay was not unreasonable or negligent. Legal malpractice can be caused through the failure to uncover important documents or facts, such as medical reports or witness statements. Other examples of malpractice include a failure to add certain defendants or claims for example, like forgetting to file a survival count in a wrongful-death case or the consistent and prolonged inability to communicate with the client.
It’s also important that it must be proved that if it weren’t the lawyer’s negligence, the plaintiff would have won the underlying case. Otherwise, the plaintiff’s claim for malpractice will be denied. This makes it very difficult to bring an action for legal malpractice. It’s essential to choose an experienced attorney to represent you.
Damages
To prevail in a legal malpractice case, plaintiffs must show financial losses resulting from the actions of an attorney. This should be proved in a lawsuit through evidence such as expert testimony, correspondence between client and attorney or billing records, and other documentation. In addition the plaintiff must show that a reasonable lawyer would have avoided the harm that was caused by the negligence of the attorney. This is referred to as the proximate cause.
The definition of malpractice can be found in a variety of ways. Some of the more common kinds of malpractice are failing to adhere to a deadline, which includes a statute of limitations, failure to conduct a conflict check or any other due diligence on the case, not applying the law to the client’s situation or breaching a fiduciary obligation (i.e. the commingling of trust account funds with personal attorney accounts), mishandling of the case, or failing to communicate with the client.
In the majority of medical malpractice cases the plaintiff will seek compensation damages. These compensations are intended to compensate the victim for expenses out of pocket and expenses such as medical and hospitals bills, the cost of equipment to help recover and lost wages. Victims can also seek non-economic damages, such as discomfort and pain or loss of enjoyment in their lives, and emotional stress.
In a lot of legal malpractice cases, there are lawsuits for punitive as well as compensatory damages. The first is meant to compensate the victim for the losses caused by the negligence of the attorney while the latter is meant to discourage future malpractice on the defendant’s part.