Malpractice Attorney Explained In Fewer Than 140 Characters

Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys are bound by a fiduciary obligation to their clients and are required to act with a high degree of skill, diligence and care. However, like all professionals attorneys make mistakes.

There are many mistakes made by an attorney are considered to be malpractice. To establish legal malpractice, the aggrieved party must show that there was breach of duty, causation, breach and damages. Let's examine each of these aspects.

Duty

Medical professionals and doctors take an oath to use their skills and experience to cure patients, not cause additional harm. The legal right of a patient to receive compensation for injuries resulting due to medical malpractice is based on the notion of the duty of care. Your attorney can determine if your doctor's actions breached the duty of care and whether these violations resulted in injury or illness.

To prove a duty of care, your lawyer has to demonstrate that a medical professional has a legal relationship with you that had a fiduciary obligation to perform their duties with an acceptable level of competence and care. This relationship can be established by eyewitness testimony, physician-patient records, and expert testimony of doctors who have similar education, experience and training.

Your lawyer will also need to demonstrate that the medical professional breached their duty to care in not adhering to the accepted standards in their area of expertise. This is often referred to as negligence. Your attorney will compare the defendant's behavior to what a reasonable individual would do in the same situation.

Your lawyer must prove that the defendant's lapse of duty directly led to the loss or injury you suffered. This is referred to as causation, and your lawyer will make use of evidence such as your doctor-patient documents, witness statements and expert testimony to prove that the defendant's failure to meet the standards of care in your case was a direct cause of your injury or loss.

Breach

A doctor is required to perform a duty of treatment to his patients that conforms to the highest standards of medical practice. If a doctor fails to adhere to these standards and the failure results in injury, then medical malpractice or negligence could occur. Typically the testimony of medical professionals with similar qualifications, training, certifications and experience will help determine what the appropriate standard of treatment should be in a specific situation. Federal and state laws and institute policies can also be used to determine what doctors should do for specific types of patients.

To prevail in a malpractice lawsuit it is necessary to prove that the doctor breached his or his duty of care and that the breach was a direct cause of injury. In legal terms, this is called the causation element and it is crucial to establish. For example in the event that a damaged arm requires an x-ray the doctor has to properly fix the arm and place it in a cast to ensure proper healing. If the doctor did not complete the procedure and the patient suffered a permanent loss of function of that arm, then malpractice could have occurred.

Causation

Legal malpractice claims founded on the evidence that the attorney made mistakes that resulted in financial losses to the client. For instance, if a lawyer does not file an action within the timeframe of limitations, leading to the case being lost for ever, the injured party could bring legal malpractice lawsuits.

However, it's important to realize that not all errors made by lawyers constitute wrong. The mistakes that involve strategy and planning are not generally considered to be malpractice lawyer and lawyers have a lot of latitude to make decisions based on their judgments as long as they are reasonable.

The law also allows lawyers considerable latitude to not perform discovery on behalf of a client, so long as the failure was not unreasonable or negligent. Failing to discover important information or documents, such as witness statements or medical reports can be a case of legal malpractice. Other instances of malpractice include the inability to add certain defendants or claims, like the mistake of not remembering a survival number for an unjustly-dead case or the inability to communicate with clients.

It is also important to remember that it must be proved that if it weren't the negligence of the lawyer, the plaintiff would have won the case. In the event that it is not, the plaintiff's claim for malpractice will be denied. This requirement makes the process of bringing legal malpractice lawsuits difficult. For this reason, it's crucial to hire an experienced attorney to represent you.

Damages

To win a legal malpractice lawsuit, plaintiffs must show financial losses caused by an attorney's actions. This has to be demonstrated in a lawsuit by utilizing evidence like expert testimony, correspondence between the client and attorney, billing records and other evidence. A plaintiff must also prove that a reasonable attorney would have prevented the harm caused by the lawyer's negligence. This is called proximate causation.

The causes of malpractice vary. Some of the most common mistakes are: failing to meet an expiration date or statute of limitations; failing to perform an investigation into a conflict in an issue; applying the law in a way that is not appropriate to the client's situation; or breaking an obligation of fiduciary (i.e. the commingling of funds from a trust account with the attorney's own accounts or handling a case in a wrong manner, and failing to communicate with the client are all examples of malpractice.

In the majority of medical malpractice cases the plaintiff seeks compensation damages. They are awarded to the victim in exchange for the expenses out of pocket and malpractice lawsuit losses, like hospital and medical bills, costs of equipment needed to aid in recovery, and loss of wages. In addition, the victims can be able to claim non-economic damages like suffering and suffering, loss of enjoyment of life, and emotional distress.

In many legal malpractice cases there are claims for punitive and compensatory damages. The former compensates the victim for the loss resulting from the attorney's negligence, while the latter is designed to discourage future misconduct by the defendant.