Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

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

Every mistake made by an attorney constitutes an act of malpractice. To prove legal negligence the victim must demonstrate the duty, breach of obligation, causation, and damage. Let's review each of these elements.

Duty-Free

Medical professionals and doctors swear by their training and skills to cure patients and not cause harm to others. A patient's legal right to receive compensation for injuries resulting from medical malpractice is based on the concept of the duty of care. Your attorney can help you determine whether or not your doctor's actions breached this duty of care, and if those breaches caused injury or illness to you.

Your lawyer has to prove that the medical professional you hired owed a fiduciary duty to act with reasonable skill and care. Proving that this relationship existed could require evidence like your records of your doctor-patient relationship eyewitness accounts and experts from doctors with similar qualifications, experience and education.

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

Your lawyer must also demonstrate that the defendant's breach caused direct loss or injury. This is known as causation, and your lawyer will make use of evidence such as your medical documents, witness statements, and expert testimony to show that the defendant's inability to meet the standards 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 professional medical standards. If a doctor does not meet those standards, and the result is an injury that is medically negligent, negligence may occur. Expert evidence from medical professionals who have the same training, certifications or experience can help determine the standard of care in any given 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 win a malpractice claim it must be proved that the doctor acted in violation of 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 component and it is crucial to prove it. If a doctor is required to perform an x-ray on a broken arm, they must place the arm in a casting and correctly set it. If the doctor was unable to do this and the patient was left with an unavoidable loss of use of the arm, then malpractice may have occurred.

Causation

Attorney malpractice claims are based on the evidence that proves that the lawyer's mistakes resulted in financial losses for the client. Legal malpractice claims can be filed by the person who was injured when, for instance, the attorney fails to file the suit within the statutes of limitations and this resultpes of malpractice include the failure to meet a deadline, for example, a statute of limitations, a failure to perform a conflict check or any other due diligence on a case, improperly applying the law to a client's case or breaching a fiduciary obligation (i.e. merging funds from a trust account an attorney's account or handling a case in a wrong manner, and not communicating with the client are all examples of malpractice.

In the majority of medical eagan malpractice Lawyer cases, the plaintiff will seek compensatory damages. These compensate the victim for the out-of-pocket expenses and losses, for example hospital and medical bills, the cost of equipment needed to aid in recovering, and lost wages. In addition, victims may be able to claim non-economic damages such as suffering and suffering and loss of enjoyment of life, and emotional distress.

In a lot of legal malpractice cases there are cases for punitive and compensatory damages. The first compensates victims for losses caused by the negligence of the attorney while the latter is designed to deter future ocean springs malpractice lawyer by the defendant's side.