Medical princeton malpractice law firm Lawsuits

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

Not all mistakes made by an attorney are considered to be Bloomington Malpractice attorney. To prove legal malpractice, an aggrieved person must demonstrate duty, breach, causation and damage. Let's take a look at each of these elements.

Duty

Doctors and other medical professionals swear to use their training and skills to cure patients and not to cause further harm. A patient's legal right to receive compensation for injuries resulting due to medical malpractice is based on the concept of duty of care. Your attorney can assist you determine if your doctor's actions breached this duty of care, and if these breaches resulted in injury or illness to you.

To prove a duty of care, your lawyer has to show that a medical professional has an agreement with you and had a fiduciary obligation to exercise reasonable skill and care. This relationship can be established by eyewitness testimony of witnesses, doctor-patient records and expert testimony of doctors who have similar education, experience, and training.

Your lawyer must also prove that the medical professional breached their duty of care by not submitting to the accepted standards of care in their field. This is typically known as negligence. Your lawyer will evaluate what the defendant did with what a reasonable individual would do in the same situation.

Your lawyer must also prove that the breach of the defendant's duty led directly to your loss or injury. This is known as causation, and your lawyer will make use of evidence like your doctor-patient documents, witness statements, and expert testimony to demonstrate that the defendant's failure to uphold the standard of care in your case was the direct cause of your injury or loss.

Breach

A doctor owes patients duties of care that conform to the standards of medical professional practice. If a doctor fails adhere to these standards and the failure results in injury, then negligence and medical malpractice might occur. Typically experts' testimony from medical professionals who have the same training, qualifications, certifications and experience will aid in determining what the best standard of care should be in a particular circumstance. State and federal laws as well as institute policies can also be used to define what doctors must do for certain types of patients.

To prevail in a malpractice lawsuit it must be proven that the doctor breached his or her duty of care and that the breach was the direct cause of an injury. This is known in legal terms as the causation element, and it is imperative to establish. For instance when a broken arm requires an x-ray the doctor has to properly place the arm and put it in a cast for proper healing. If the doctor fails to perform this, and the patient is left with a permanent loss of usage of the arm, malpractice could be at play.

Causation

Attorney malpractice claims rely on the evidence that proves that the lawyer's mithe attorney. This is known as proximate cause.

Malpractice occurs in many ways. The most frequent errors include: not meeting an expiration date or statute of limitations; failing to conduct the necessary conflict checks on cases; applying law in a way that is not appropriate to the client's situation; or breaking a fiduciary obligation (i.e. the commingling of funds from a trust account with an attorney's account, mishandling a case and failing to communicate with the client are just a few examples of misconduct.

In most medical malpractice cases, the plaintiff will seek compensatory damages. These compensate the victim for the out-of-pocket expenses and losses, for example medical and hospital bills, costs of equipment needed to aid in recovery, and lost wages. Additionally, victims may claim non-economic damages, like pain and suffering as well as loss of enjoyment life, and emotional distress.

Legal malpractice cases often involve claims for compensatory as well as punitive damages. The former compensates victims for the losses caused by the negligence of the attorney, while the latter is designed to discourage future misconduct by the defendant.