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Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys are in a fiduciary position with their clients and are expected to act with diligence, care and expertise. Attorneys make mistakes, just like any other professional.

A mistake made by an attorney constitutes legal malpractice. To establish legal malpractice, the aggrieved party must show duty, breach, causation and damages. Let's take a look at each of these elements.

Duty

Medical professionals and doctors swear by their training and expertise to treat patients and not cause harm to others. Duty of care is the basis for a patient's right to compensation in the event of injury due to medical negligence. Your lawyer can assist you determine whether or not your doctor's actions violated the duty of care, and whether these breaches resulted in injury or illness to you.

To prove a duty to care, your lawyer will need to establish that a medical professional has a legal relationship with you that owed you a fiduciary responsibility to act with reasonable expertise and care. This can be proved by eyewitness testimony, physician-patient reports and expert testimony from doctors with similar educational, experience and training.

Your lawyer will also have to demonstrate that the medical professional breached their duty of care in not adhering to the accepted standards of their field. This is often referred to as negligence. Your attorney will examine the defendant's actions to what a reasonable individual would take in the same scenario.

Your lawyer must also demonstrate that the breach of the defendant's duty led directly to your injury or loss. This is known as causation. Your lawyer will make use of evidence like your medical reports, witness statements and expert testimony to demonstrate that the defendant's inability to meet the standard of care in your case was a direct cause of your injury or loss.

Breach

A doctor owes patients duties of care that reflect professional medical standards. If a doctor doesn't meet these standards, and the failure results in an injury that is medically negligent, negligence can occur. Typically experts' testimony from medical professionals who have similar training, expertise, certifications and experience will aid in determining what the best standard of care should be in a particular situation. Federal and state laws, as well as guidelines from the institute, help define what doctors are expected to do for certain types of patients.

To prevail in a malpractice lawsuit it is necessary to prove that the doctor breached his or her duty of care and that the breach was the direct cause of an injury. In legal terms, this is known as the causation factor and it is essential to establish. If a doctor needs to obtain an xray of an injured arm, they must place the arm in a cast and correctly place it. If the doctor fails to complete this task and the patient suffers a permanent loss in usage of the arm, malpractice could have occurred.

Causation

Lawyer malpractice claims are based on the evidence that the attorney made mistakes that resulted in financial losses to the client. For example when a lawyer does not file a lawsuit within the statute of limitations, resulting in the case being lost for ever the person who was injured could bring legal malpractice lawsuits.

However, it's crucial to be aware that not all mistakes made by lawyers are a sign of mistakes that constitute malpractice. Strategy and planning errors do not usually constitute misconduct. Attorneys have a broad decision-making discretion to make decisions as long as they're able to make them in a reasonable manner.

The law also gives attorneys a wide range of options to refuse to conduct a discovery process on behalf of a client, so long as the action was not negligent or unreasonable. Legal malpractice can be committed by not obtaining crucial documents or information, such as medical reports or witness statements. Other instances of malpractice include the inability to add certain defendants or claims, for instance forgetting a survival count for an unjustly-dead case, or the repeated failure to communicate with clients.

It's also important to keep in mind that it has to be proven that if it weren't for the lawyer's negligence, the plaintiff would have won the underlying case. In the event that it is not, the plaintiff's claim for malpractice will be rejected. This requirement makes the process of bringing legal malpractice lawsuits difficult. Therefore, it's important to choose a seasoned attorney to represent you.

Damages

A plaintiff must demonstrate that the attorney's actions have caused actual financial losses in order to win a legal malpractice suit. In a lawsuit, this has to be proved with evidence, such as expert testimony and correspondence between the attorney and client. A plaintiff must also prove that a reasonable attorney would have prevented the damage caused by the lawyer's negligence. This is referred to as proximate cause.

Malpractice can occur in many different ways. The most frequent malpractices include: failing the deadline or statute of limitations; not conducting the necessary conflict checks on an issue; applying the law incorrectly to a client's situation; or breaking a fiduciary obligation (i.e. mixing trust funds with an attorney's personal accounts) or mishandling a case, and failing to communicate with clients.

In most medical malpractice cases, the plaintiff will seek compensation damages. These damages compensate the victim for the cost of out-of-pocket expenses and losses, such as hospital and medical bills, costs of equipment to help recover and lost wages. Victims are also able to claim non-economic damages such as pain and discomfort as well as loss of enjoyment from their lives, and emotional stress.

Legal malpractice cases typically include claims for compensatory and punitive damages. The former compensates victims for the losses caused by the negligence of the attorney, while the latter is intended to deter any future malpractice committed by the defendant.