Medical Malpractice Lawsuits
Attorneys hold a fiduciary relationship with their clients and are expected to conduct themselves with diligence, care and expertise. Attorneys make mistakes just like any other professional.
Not all mistakes made by attorneys are a result of malpractice. To establish legal malpractice, the aggrieved party has to prove obligation, breach, causation and damages. Let’s look at each of these elements.
Duty-Free
Doctors and other medical professionals swear to use their education and experience to help patients and not cause further harm. A patient’s legal right to receive compensation for injuries resulting due to medical malpractice is based on the notion of duty of care. Your attorney can help you determine if your doctor’s actions breached this duty of care, and if these breaches caused injuries or illness to you.
Your lawyer has to prove that the medical professional you hired owed a fiduciary duty to act with reasonable skill and care. To prove that the relationship existed, you may require evidence such as the records of your doctor and patient or eyewitness evidence, or expert testimony from doctors who have similar experiences, education and training.
Your lawyer will also have to prove that the medical professional violated their duty of care by not living up to the accepted standards of practice in their field. This is often known as negligence. Your lawyer will be able to compare what the defendant did with what a reasonable person would do in the same situation.
Finally, your lawyer must show that the defendant’s breach of duty directly led to the loss or injury you suffered. This is referred to as causation. Your lawyer will make use of evidence such as your medical reports, witness statements and expert testimony to show that the defendant’s inability to uphold the standards of care in your case was the direct cause of your injury or loss.
Breach
A doctor has a duty to patients of care that are consistent with the highest standards of medical professionalism. If a doctor doesn’t meet the standards, and the result is an injury and/or medical malpractice, then negligence can occur. Expert testimony from medical professionals who have similar training, certifications, skills and experience can help determine the level of care for a specific situation. State and federal laws as well as institute policies also help determine what doctors are required to perform for specific types of patients.
In order to win a malpractice claim it must be proved that the doctor violated his or her duty of care and that this violation was a direct reason for an injury. In legal terms, this is referred to as the causation component and it is crucial that it is established. For instance an injured arm requires an x-ray, the doctor has to properly fix the arm and place it in a cast to ensure proper healing. If the doctor fails to complete this task and the patient suffers a permanent loss in use of the arm, malpractice may have occurred.
Causation
Attorney malpractice claims rely on evidence that the attorney’s mistakes resulted in financial losses for the client. Legal malpractice claims can be filed by the party who suffered the loss in the event that, for instance, the lawyer fails to file the suit within the statutes of limitations and this results in the case being permanently lost.
It’s important to recognize that not all mistakes made by attorneys are considered to be malpractice. The mistakes that involve strategy and planning are not generally considered to be malpractice attorneys have lots of freedom to make decisions based on their judgments as long as they’re reasonable.
The law also allows lawyers considerable latitude to not perform discovery on behalf of a client provided that the decision was not arbitrary or a result of negligence. Legal malpractice is committed by not obtaining crucial documents or information, such as medical reports or witness statements. Other examples of east petersburg malpractice lawsuit include a failure to add certain defendants or claims, such as forgetting to file a survival count in a wrongful death lawsuit or the consistent and prolonged failure to contact clients.
It is also important to note the fact that the plaintiff has to demonstrate that, if it weren’t the lawyer’s negligence they would have won their case. The plaintiff’s claim of malpractice is rejected in the event that it is not proved. This makes it very difficult to bring a legal fairborn malpractice law firm claim. This is why it’s essential to choose an experienced attorney to represent you.
Damages
To win a legal malpractice lawsuit a plaintiff must demonstrate actual financial losses incurred by the actions of an attorney. In the case of a lawsuit this has to be proven with evidence such as expert testimony and correspondence between the attorney and client. A plaintiff must also prove that a reasonable lawyer could have prevented the damage caused by the lawyer’s negligence. This is known as proximate causation.
The causes of malpractice vary. The most frequent kinds of malpractice are the failure to meet a deadline, for example, a statute of limitations, failure to conduct a conflict check or other due diligence of the case, not applying law to a client’s situation or breaking a fiduciary duty (i.e. the commingling of trust account funds with an attorney’s personal accounts) or a mishandling of the case, and failing to communicate with the client.
In the majority of medical malpractice cases the plaintiff seeks compensatory damages. These compensate the victim for the out-of-pocket expenses and losses, including hospital and medical bills, costs of equipment needed to aid in recovering, and lost wages. In addition, victims may be able to claim non-economic damages such as suffering and suffering or loss of enjoyment life, and emotional distress.
Legal malpractice cases typically involve claims for compensatory or punitive damages. The former compensates victims for losses caused by the negligence of the attorney, while the latter is designed to deter future murrysville malpractice attorney by the defendant.