ARK
MUSIC

Medical Malpractice Attorney Lawsuits

Attorneys have a fiduciary duty to their clients, and they must act with skill, diligence and care. However, like all professionals attorneys make mistakes.

There are many mistakes made by an attorney are legal malpractice. To prove legal negligence the victim must demonstrate the duty, breach of obligation, causation, as well as damage. Let's take a look at each one of these aspects.

Duty

Doctors and medical professionals take an oath to apply their expertise and knowledge to treat patients, not cause additional harm. The legal right of a patient to compensation for injuries sustained due to medical malpractice is based on the notion of duty of care. Your attorney will determine if the actions of your doctor violated the duty to care and if the breach resulted in your injury or illness.

Your lawyer must demonstrate that the medical professional was bound by the duty of a fiduciary to perform with reasonable competence and care. Establishing that this relationship existed may require evidence, such as your records of your doctor-patient relationship eyewitness accounts and expert testimony from doctors who have similar knowledge, experience, and education.

Your lawyer must also show that the medical professional violated their duty of care by not submitting to the standards of practice that are accepted in their field. This is commonly called negligence. Your lawyer will evaluate what the defendant did with what a reasonable person would do in the same situation.

Then, your lawyer has to prove that the defendant's lapse of duty directly caused the loss or injury you suffered. This is referred to as causation, and your attorney will use evidence like your doctor-patient reports, witness statements and expert testimony to demonstrate that the defendant's failure to adhere to the standards of care in your case was a direct cause of your injury or loss.

Breach

A doctor is obligated to patients to perform duties of care that reflect the highest standards of medical professionalism. If a physician fails to meet the standards, and the result is an injury and/or medical malpractice, then negligence may occur. Typically expert testimony from medical professionals who have similar training, expertise and certifications will help determine what the standard of care should be in a particular case. State and federal laws as well as institute policies also define what doctors must perform for specific types of patients.

To be successful in a malpractice case it must be established that the doctor violated his or her duty to care and that the violation was the direct cause of an injury. This is known in legal terms as the causation element and it is imperative that it is established. If a doctor needs to conduct an x-ray examination of an injured arm, they have to put the arm in a casting and correctly set it. If the doctor fails to do this and the patient suffers a permanent loss in use of the arm, then malpractice may have taken place.

Causation

Attorney malpractice claims are founded on the evidence that a lawyer made mistakes that led to financial losses for the client. Legal malpractice claims may be brought by the party who suffered the loss in the event that, for instance, the attorney is unable to file a lawsuit within the prescribed time and this results in the case being forever lost.

It is important to understand that not all mistakes made by lawyers constitute malpractice. Strategies and mistakes are not usually considered to be malpractice attorneys have the ability in making judgment calls so long as they're reasonable.

The law also allows attorneys the right to refuse to conduct discovery for a client as long as the failure was not unreasonable or a case of negligence. Failure to uncover important documents or facts like medical or witness statements or medical reports, could be an instance of legal malpractice. Other examples of malpractice are the failure to add certain defendants or claims, like failing to include a survival count for a wrongful-death case or the inability to communicate with clients.

It is also important to note the necessity for the plaintiff to demonstrate that, if it weren't the lawyer's negligence they would have won their case. If not, the plaintiff's claims for malpractice will be denied. This makes the filing of legal malpractice claims a challenge. It is essential to choose an experienced attorney.

Damages

To win a legal malpractice lawsuit, the plaintiff must prove actual financial losses that result from the actions of the attorney. This must be shown in a lawsuit by utilizing evidence like expert testimony, correspondence between the client and attorney, billing records and other records. In addition the plaintiff must demonstrate that a reasonable lawyer could have avoided the damage caused by the negligence of the attorney. This is called proximate causation.

Malpractice can occur in many different ways. Some of the most common mistakes include: not meeting a deadline or statute of limitations; not performing the necessary conflict checks on cases; applying law improperly to a client's situation; or breaking the fiduciary obligation (i.e. merging funds from a trust account with an attorney's own accounts, mishandling a case and not communicating with the client are just a few examples of misconduct.

Medical malpractice law firms lawsuits typically involve claims for compensation damages. They compensate the victim for expenses out of pocket and losses, such as hospital and medical bills, the cost of equipment required to aid in recovering, and lost wages. Victims can also claim non-economic damages, such as discomfort and pain or loss of enjoyment in their lives, as well as emotional distress.

In a lot of legal malpractice cases, there are claims for punitive or compensatory damages. The former is intended to compensate the victim for the losses caused by the negligence of the attorney while the latter is meant to discourage future malpractice by the defendant's side.