Medical
Malpractice LawsuitsAttorneys are bound by a fiduciary obligation to their clients and are required to act with a degree of diligence, skill and care. But, as with all professionals, attorneys make mistakes.
The mistakes made by an attorney constitutes legal malpractice. To prove negligence in a legal sense the person who was hurt must prove obligation, breach of obligation, causation, and damages. Let's look at each of these components.
Duty-Free
Medical professionals and doctors swear to apply their education and skills to cure patients and not cause further harm. A patient's legal right to be compensated for injuries sustained from medical malpractice hinges on the notion of duty of care. Your attorney will determine if the actions of your doctor violated the duty of care and if the breach caused you injury or illness.
To establish a duty of care, your lawyer needs to show that a medical professional has an agreement with you that had a fiduciary obligation to exercise reasonable skill and care. Proving that this relationship existed may require evidence such as your doctor-patient records eyewitness accounts and experts from doctors with similar knowledge, experience, and education.
Your lawyer will also need to demonstrate that the medical professional violated their duty to care in not adhering to the accepted standards of their field. This is often known as negligence. Your attorney will compare what the defendant did with what a reasonable individual would do in a similar situation.
Your lawyer must prove that the defendant's breach of duty directly caused damage or loss to you. This is known as causation. Your lawyer will make use of evidence, such as your doctor/patient records, witness testimony and expert testimony to prove that the defendant's inability to meet the standards of care was the main cause of your injury or loss to you.
Breach
A doctor is bound by a duty of care to his patients which conforms to the highest standards of medical practice. If a physician fails to adhere to these standards and fails to do so results in injury, negligence and medical
malpractice attorney might occur. Typically the testimony of medical professionals who have the same training, qualifications and certifications will help determine what the appropriate standard of medical care should be in a particular circumstance. State and federal laws, as well as policies of the institute, help define what doctors are expected to do for certain kinds of patients.
In order to win a
malpractice law firms claim the case must be proved that the doctor violated his or duty of care and that the breach was a direct cause of injury. In legal terms, this is referred to as the causation factor and it is crucial that it is established. For instance, if a broken arm requires an xray the doctor must set the arm and then place it in a cast for proper healing. If the doctor fails to perform this, and the patient suffers a permanent loss of usage of the arm, malpractice may be at play.
Causation
Legal malpractice claims are built on the basis of evidence that a lawyer made mistakes that resulted in financial losses for the client. Legal malpractice claims can be filed by the injured party if, for example, the attorney does not file the lawsuit within the prescribed time and the case being lost forever.
It's important to know that not all mistakes by attorneys are considered to be malpractice. Errors involving strategy and planning do not typically constitute malpractice and lawyers have lots of freedom to make judgement calls so long as they are reasonable.
The law also allows attorneys ample discretion to refrain from performing discovery for a client as long as the failure was not unreasonable or a case of negligence. Legal malpractice is committed by not obtaining crucial documents or information, such as medical reports or witness statements. Other instances of malpractice could be a inability to include certain defendants or claims for example, like forgetting to include a survival count in a case of wrongful death or the consistent and persistent inability to contact clients.
It is also important to note the fact that the plaintiff has to prove that if not for the lawyer's careless conduct, they would have prevailed. The plaintiff's claim for malpractice is deemed invalid if it is not proven. This requirement makes it difficult to bring a legal malpractice claim. It's important to find an experienced attorney to represent you.
Damages
A plaintiff must show that the attorney's actions resulted in actual financial losses in order 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 the client. In addition the plaintiff has to prove that a reasonable lawyer could have prevented the damage caused by the negligence of the attorney. This is referred to as the proximate cause.
Malpractice can occur in many different ways. The most frequent kinds of malpractice are the failure to meet a deadline, such as the statute of limitations, failing to conduct a conflict-check or other due diligence on a case, improperly applying law to a client's circumstance or breaching a fiduciary obligation (i.e. merging funds from a trust account an attorney's own accounts or handling a case improperly and failing to communicate with the client are just a few examples of misconduct.
In the majority of medical malpractice cases the plaintiff will seek compensation damages. The compensations pay for the cost of out-of-pocket expenses and expenses like medical and hospitals bills, equipment costs to help recover and lost wages. Additionally, victims may be able to claim non-economic damages such as pain and suffering and loss of enjoyment of life, and emotional stress.
Legal malpractice cases usually involve claims for compensatory and punitive damages. The former compensates victims for the losses caused by the negligence of an attorney, while the latter is intended to discourage future malpractice by the defendant.