Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys have a fiduciary connection with their clients and are required to behave with care, diligence and expertise. Attorneys make mistakes, just like every other professional.

Not all mistakes made by an attorney are considered to be malpractice. To prove legal negligence, the aggrieved must show the duty, breach of duty, causation and damages. Let's look at each of these elements.

Duty

Doctors and other medical professionals swear to use their training and skills to cure patients and not cause harm to others. The duty of care is the foundation for a patient's right to compensation when they suffer injuries due to medical negligence. Your attorney will determine if your doctor's actions breached the duty of medical care and if those breaches caused you injury or illness.

To prove a duty of care, your lawyer must to show that a medical professional has a legal relationship with you, in which they were bound by a fiduciary duty to perform their duties with an acceptable level of skill and care. This relationship may be proven through eyewitness testimony, doctor-patient records and expert testimony of doctors who have similar education, experience and training.

Your lawyer will also have to prove that the medical professional breached their duty to care in not adhering to the accepted standards in their area of expertise. This is often described as negligence. Your lawyer will be able to compare what the defendant did to what a reasonable individual would do in a similar situation.

Your lawyer must also show that the defendant's negligence directly caused your injury or loss. This is called causation. Your lawyer will rely on 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 sole cause of injury or loss to you.

Breach

A doctor has a duty to patients of care that adhere to professional medical standards. If a doctor does not live up to those standards and this results in injury, negligence and medical malpractice might occur. Typically the testimony of medical professionals who have similar training, expertise or certifications will aid in determining what the best standard of medical care should be in a specific situation. State and federal laws, along with guidelines from the institute, help define what doctors are expected to do for certain kinds of patients.

To prevail in a malpractice lawsuit the case must be proved that the doctor violated his or duty of care and that this breach was the direct cause of an injury. In legal terms, this is known as the causation element and it is essential to establish. If a doctor has to conduct an x-ray examination of an injured arm, they must place the arm in a casting and correctly set it. If the physician failed to do this and the patient suffered an irreparable loss of the use of the arm, then villa park malpractice attorney could have occurred.

Causation

Legal fort lupton malpractice lawyer claims built on the basis of evidence that the attorney committed errors that resulted in financial losses to the client. Legal malpractice claims can be brought by the party who suffered the loss if, for example, the lawyer does not file the lawsuit within the statutes of limitations and the case being thrown out forever.

It is important to understand that not all mistakes by lawyers are considered to be malpractice. The mistakes that involve strategy and planning are not generally considered to be malpractice attorneys are given a lot of latitude to make judgment calls as long as they are reasonable.

The law also allows lawyers considerable latitude to not perform discovery for a client as long as the error was not unreasonable or negligence. Failing to discover important information or documents, such as medical or orono Malpractice law Firm witness statements can be a case of legal malpractice. Other examples of malpractice include a failure to add certain claims or defendants such as failing to file a survival count in a wrongful-death case, or the repeated and prolonged inability to communicate with a client.

It's also important to note that it has to be proven that, had it not been the negligence of the lawyer, the plaintiff would have won the case. Otherwise, the plaintiff's claim for malpractice will be rejected. This requirement makes the process of bringing legal malpractice claims complicated. Therefore, it's important to find an experienced attorney to represent you.

Damages

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

The definition of malpractice can be found in a variety of ways. The most frequent types of malpractice include the failure to meet a deadline, including a statute of limitation, failure to conduct a conflict-check or other due diligence of the case, not applying the law to a client's case and breaching a fiduciary responsibility (i.e. Commingling funds from a trust account the attorney's personal accounts or handling a case improperly and not communicating with the client are just a few examples of misconduct.

Medical malpractice lawsuits typically involve claims for compensation damages. These damages compensate the victim for out-of pocket expenses and losses such as medical and hospitals bills, equipment costs to aid recovery, and lost wages. In addition, victims can claim non-economic damages, such as pain and suffering or loss of enjoyment life, and emotional stress.

In many legal malpractice cases there are cases for punitive and compensatory damages. The former compensates victims for losses resulting from the negligence of an attorney, while the latter is designed to deter any future malpractice committed by the defendant.