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on June 18, 2024
Medical malpractice attorney Lawsuits
Attorneys are in a fiduciary position with their clients and are required to act with care, diligence and expertise. However, like all professionals attorneys make mistakes.
The mistakes made by lawyers are considered to be malpractice. To prove legal negligence the victim must demonstrate the breach of duty, duty, causation, and damages. Let's take a look at each of these aspects.
Duty-Free
Doctors and other medical professionals swear to apply their education and expertise to treat patients and not cause further harm. The legal right of a patient to compensation for injuries sustained from medical malpractice hinges on the concept of the duty of care. Your attorney can help you determine whether or not your doctor's actions violated this duty of care, and whether the breach caused injury or illness to you.
To prove a duty to care, your lawyer has to establish that a medical professional had an official relationship with you and had a fiduciary obligation to exercise a reasonable level of competence and care. This relationship can be established through eyewitness testimony, doctor-patient records and expert testimony of doctors with similar education, experience and training.
Your lawyer must also show that the medical professional breached their duty of care by not living up to the accepted standards of care in their area of expertise. This is often called negligence. Your lawyer will assess the conduct of the defendant to what a reasonable person would take in the same scenario.
Your lawyer must also demonstrate that the defendant's negligence directly contributed to your loss or injury. This is known as causation. Your attorney will rely on evidence such as your medical documents, witness statements, and expert testimony to prove that the defendant's failure to live up to the standard of care in your case was the direct cause of your loss or injury.
Breach
A doctor is bound by a duty of care to his patients that reflects professional medical standards. If a doctor fails to meet those standards and that failure causes injury, then medical malpractice and negligence may occur. Typically, expert testimony from medical professionals with similar qualifications, training, certifications and experience will help determine what the standard of care is in a particular circumstance. State and federal laws as well as institute policies also help determine what doctors are required to do for specific types of patients.
To prevail in a malpractice lawsuit it must be proven that the doctor violated his or her duty of care and that this breach was a direct cause of an injury. In legal terms, this is called the causation factor and it is vital to establish. For instance an injured arm requires an x-ray, the doctor must set the arm and then place it in a cast for proper healing. If the doctor was unable to perform this task and the patient was left with an unavoidable loss of the use of the arm, then malpractice may have occurred.
Causation
Attorney malpractice claims are based on evidence that shows the attorney's errors resulted in financial losses for the client. For example when a lawyer fails to file a lawsuit within the statute of limitations, resulting in the case being lost for ever and the victim can bring legal malpractice actions.
It is important to understand that not all mistakes made by attorneys constitute wrong. Strategies and planning errors do not usually constitute negligence. Attorneys have a broad range of discretion in making decisions as long as they're in the right place.
The law also allows lawyers the right to refuse to conduct discovery for a client as long as the error was not unreasonable or a case of negligence. The failure to discover crucial details or documents, such as medical reports or witness statements or medical reports, could be an instance of legal malpractice. Other instances of malpractice could be a failure to add certain claims or defendants for example, like forgetting to make a survival claim in a wrongful-death case or the frequent and extended inability to contact a client.
It's also important that it has to be proven that, if not for the lawyer's negligence, the plaintiff would have won the case. Otherwise, the plaintiff's claim for malpractice will be denied. This makes the process of bringing legal malpractice claims complicated. It is crucial to find an experienced attorney.
Damages
To win a legal malpractice Attorney lawsuit, a plaintiff must demonstrate actual financial losses incurred by the actions of an attorney. This can be proven in a lawsuit using evidence such as expert testimony, correspondence between client and attorney along with billing records and other documentation. A plaintiff must also demonstrate that a reasonable lawyer could have prevented the damage caused by the negligence of the lawyer. This is known as the proximate cause.
It can happen in many different ways. Some of the more common kinds of malpractice are the failure to adhere to a deadline, which includes a statute of limitations, a failure to conduct a check on conflicts or any other due diligence on 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 an instance, and failing to communicate with a client.
In most medical malpractice cases, the plaintiff will seek compensation damages. They are awarded to the victim in exchange for the expenses out of pocket and losses, for example hospital and medical bills, the cost of equipment required to aid in recovery, and lost wages. Victims can also seek non-economic damages like discomfort and pain and loss of enjoyment their lives, as well as emotional distress.
Legal malpractice cases usually involve claims for compensatory and punitive damages. The first compensates victims for losses caused by the attorney's negligence and the latter is intended to prevent future mistakes on the part of the defendant.