Malpractice Attorney Explained In Fewer Than 140 Characters

Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys are in a fiduciary position with their clients and are required to conduct themselves with care, diligence and expertise. Attorneys make mistakes, just like every other professional.

Every mistake made by an attorney can be considered malpractice. To prove legal malpractice, an aggrieved party must show duty, breach, causation and damages. Let's take a look at each of these components.

Duty

Medical professionals and doctors swear by their training and expertise to treat patients and not cause harm to others. The legal right of a patient to compensation for injuries sustained from medical malpractice is based on the notion of the duty of care. Your lawyer can help determine if your doctor's actions breached this duty of care, and whether those breaches caused injury or illness to you.

To establish a duty of care, your lawyer has to establish that a medical professional has an official relationship with you and were bound by a fiduciary duty to perform their duties with reasonable skill and care. To prove that the relationship existed, you may require evidence, such as the records of your doctor-patient or eyewitness evidence, or expert testimony from doctors with similar knowledge, experience, and education.

Your lawyer will also have to demonstrate that the medical professional breached their duty of caring by failing to follow the accepted standards of their field. This is usually referred to by the term negligence. Your lawyer will be able to compare what the defendant did with what a reasonable person would do in a similar situation.

Then, your lawyer has to show that the defendant's breach of duty directly resulted in injury or loss to you. This is called causation. Your lawyer will use evidence, such as your doctor/patient records, witness testimony, and expert testimony, to demonstrate that the defendant's inability to meet the standards of care was the sole reason for the loss or injury to you.

Breach

A doctor is obligated to patients to perform duties of care that adhere to professional medical standards. If a doctor fails to meet those standards and that failure causes injury, then medical malpractice or negligence could occur. Typically experts' testimony from medical professionals with similar training, skills and certifications will help determine what the appropriate standard of treatment should be in a particular case. Federal and state laws, along with guidelines from the institute, help define what doctors are required to do for certain types of patients.

To prevail in a malpractice case, it must be shown that the doctor breached his or their duty of care, and that the breach was the direct cause of injury. This is referred to in legal terms as the causation element, and it is imperative to prove it. If a doctor has to perform an x-ray on an injured arm, they must put the arm in a cast and properly place it. If the doctor did not do so and the patient suffered an irreparable loss of use of the arm, then malpractice could have occurred.

Causation

Legal malpractice claims are built on the basis of evidence that the attorney committed mistakes that resulted in financial losses for the client. For instance when a lawyer fails to file a lawsuit within the prescribed time of limitations, resulting in the case being lost forever the party who suffered damages could bring legal malpractice attorneys lawsuits (Recommended Studying).

However, it's important to realize that not all errors made by attorneys are wrong. Strategies and Malpractice Lawsuits planning mistakes do not usually constitute malpractice. Attorneys have a wide decision-making discretion to make decisions, as long as they're able to make them in a reasonable manner.

The law also allows lawyers the right to refuse to conduct discovery for a client provided that the decision was not arbitrary or negligence. Failure to uncover important facts or documents, such as witness statements or medical reports, is a potential example of legal malpractice. Other examples of malpractice lawyers are a failure to add certain defendants or claims such as omitting to make a survival claim in a wrongful-death case or the continual and long-running inability to contact clients.

It is also important to remember that it has to be proven that but the lawyer's negligence, the plaintiff would have won the case. If not, the plaintiff's claims for malpractice will be rejected. This requirement makes the process of bringing legal malpractice lawsuits difficult. It is important to employ an experienced attorney.

Damages

To prevail in a legal malpractice lawsuit the plaintiff must prove actual financial losses resulting from the actions of the attorney. In the case of a lawsuit this has to be proved with evidence, like expert testimony or correspondence between the client and attorney. In addition the plaintiff has to prove that a reasonable lawyer could have prevented the harm caused by the negligence of the attorney. This is referred to as proximate cause.

Malpractice occurs in many ways. Some of the more common types of malpractice include: failing to meet a deadline, for example, a statute of limitations, a failure to conduct a conflict-check or other due diligence check on a case, improperly applying the law to the client's situation, breaching a fiduciary duty (i.e. mixing trust account funds with personal attorney accounts) and mishandling an instance, and failing to communicate with the client.

In the majority of medical malpractice cases the plaintiff is seeking compensatory damages. These compensate the victim for the out-of-pocket expenses and losses, including hospital and medical bills, the cost of equipment needed to aid in recovery, and lost wages. Victims may also claim non-economic damages, such as pain and discomfort and loss of enjoyment their lives, and emotional suffering.

In a lot of legal malpractice cases, there are claims for punitive or compensatory damages. The former compensates the victim for losses caused by the negligence of the attorney, while the latter is designed to deter future malpractice by the defendant.