Beware Of This Common Mistake With Your Malpractice Attorney

Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys have a fiduciary duty to their clients and they must act with a high degree of skill, diligence and care. Attorneys make mistakes, just like every other professional.

Not every mistake made by an attorney constitutes malpractice. To demonstrate legal malpractice, an aggrieved party has to prove duty, breach, causation and damage. Let's look at each one of these aspects.

Duty

Medical professionals and doctors swear to use their training and experience to help patients and not cause harm to others. A patient's legal right to be compensated for injuries sustained from medical malpractice settlement hinges on the concept of duty of care. Your attorney will determine if your doctor's actions breached the duty of medical care and if these breaches resulted in injury or illness.

Your lawyer must prove that the medical professional you hired owed an obligation of fiduciary to act with reasonable competence and Malpractice Legal care. This can be proved through eyewitness testimony, doctor-patient documents and expert testimony from doctors who have similar education, experience and training.

Your lawyer must also prove that the medical professional breached their duty of care by failing to adhere to the standards of practice that are accepted in their field. This is often known as negligence. Your attorney will compare what the defendant did to what a reasonable individual would do in a similar situation.

Finally, your lawyer must prove that the defendant's lapse of duty directly caused your loss or injury. This is called causation. Your lawyer will rely on evidence including your doctor's or patient records, witness testimony and expert testimony, to prove that the defendant's failure to adhere to the standard of care was the primary cause of injury or loss to you.

Breach

A doctor is required to perform a duty of care for his patients that conforms to the highest standards of medical practice. If a physician fails to meet the standards, and the resulting failure causes an injury and/or medical malpractice, then negligence could result. Expert testimony from medical professionals who possess similar qualifications, training or experience can help determine the appropriate level of care in any given situation. State and federal laws and institute policies also determine what doctors should perform for specific types of patients.

To be successful in a malpractice case, it must be proven that the doctor acted in violation of his or her duty to care and that the violation was the direct cause of an injury. In legal terms, this is known as the causation component, and it is crucial that it is established. For example in the event that a damaged arm requires an xray the doctor has to properly set the arm and place it in a cast to ensure proper healing. If the doctor is unable to perform this, and the patient is left with a permanent loss of use of the arm, malpractice could have occurred.

Causation

Legal malpractice claims are based on evidence that the attorney committed mistakes that led to financial losses to the client. For example the lawyer does not file a lawsuit within the statute of limitations, resulting in the case being lost forever and the victim can file legal malpractice claims.

It's important to recognize that not all mistakes made by attorneys constitute malpractice. Strategy and planning errors are not typically considered to be negligence. Attorneys have a broad decision-making discretion to make decisions, as long as they're able to make them in a reasonable manner.

Additionally, the law grants attorneys considerable leeway to fail to conduct discovery on a client's behalf, as long as the action was not unreasonable or negligent. Failing to discover important facts or documents, such as medical reports or statements of witnesses can be a case of legal malpractice law. Other examples of malpractice are the failure to add certain defendants or claims, like not noticing a survival count in a wrongful-death case or the constant failure to communicate with clients.

It's also important that it must be proven that, had it not been the negligence of the lawyer, 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 makes the process of bringing legal malpractice lawsuits difficult. For this reason, it's important to choose a seasoned attorney to represent you.

Damages

A plaintiff must prove that the attorney's actions have caused actual financial losses to win a legal malpractice lawsuit. This has to be demonstrated in a lawsuit using evidence like expert testimony, correspondence between client and attorney as well as billing records and other documentation. The plaintiff must also show that a reasonable attorney would have prevented the damage caused by the negligence of the lawyer. This is known as the proximate cause.

malpractice law can manifest in a number of different ways. Some of the most common mistakes include: not meeting an expiration date or statute of limitations; failing to perform an investigation into a conflict in an issue; applying the law improperly to a client's particular situation; and breaking a fiduciary obligation (i.e. mixing funds from a trust account with the attorney's personal accounts or handling a case in a wrong manner, and not communicating with the client are just a few examples of misconduct.

Medical malpractice lawsuits typically include claims for compensatory damages. These compensations are intended to compensate the victim for out-of-pocket expenses as well as expenses like medical and hospitals bills, the cost of equipment to aid in recovery, and lost wages. Additionally, victims may be able to claim non-economic damages such as pain and suffering and loss of enjoyment of life and emotional suffering.

In many legal malpractice cases, there are claims for punitive and compensatory damages. The former compensates victims for losses caused by the attorney's negligence, while the latter is designed to deter future Malpractice legal by the defendant.