10-Pinterest Accounts You Should Follow About Malpractice Attorney

Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys have a fiduciary duty to their clients, and they must act with diligence, skill and care. However, like all professionals, attorneys make mistakes.

The mistakes made by an attorney can be considered an act of malpractice. To prove negligence in a legal sense the person who was hurt must prove the breach of duty, lawsuits obligation, causation, and damages. Let's take a look at each of these components.

Duty

Doctors and medical professionals take the oath of using their knowledge and expertise to treat patients and not causing further harm. The legal right of a patient to be compensated for injuries sustained from medical malpractice rests on the notion of duty of care. Your attorney will determine if the actions of your doctor violated the duty of care and if those breaches caused you injury or illness.

To prove a duty to care, your lawyer needs to prove that a medical professional had an agreement with you and had a fiduciary obligation to perform their duties with a reasonable level of skill and care. This relationship can be established by eyewitness testimony of witnesses, doctor-patient documents and expert testimony from doctors with similar educational, experience and training.

Your lawyer must also demonstrate that the medical professional breached their duty of care by failing to adhere to the accepted standards of care in their field. This is typically called negligence. Your attorney will compare what the defendant did with what a reasonable person would do in the same situation.

Your lawyer must demonstrate that the defendant's breach of duty directly caused injury or loss to you. This is called causation. Your lawyer will make use of evidence, such as your doctor/patient records, witness testimony, and expert testimony, to show that the defendant's inability to adhere to the standard of care was the sole cause of your injury or loss to you.

Breach

A doctor has a duty of care to his patients that conforms to the highest standards of medical practice. If a physician fails to adhere to these standards and that failure results in injury, medical malpractice and negligence could occur. Typically the testimony of medical professionals with similar training, skills or certifications will aid in determining what the best standard of treatment should be in a particular situation. Federal and state laws and institute policies also determine what doctors are required to perform for specific types of patients.

To win a malpractice attorneys claim it must be proved that the doctor breached his or her duty of care and that the violation was a direct reason for an injury. In legal terms, this is known as the causation component, and it is vital that it is established. For example, if a broken arm requires an x-ray, the doctor must properly place the arm and put it in a cast to ensure proper healing. If the doctor is unable to do this and the patient loses their the use of the arm, malpractice could be at play.

Causation

Attorney malpractice claims rely on evidence that the attorney's mistakes resulted in financial losses for the client. For instance when a lawyer does not file an action within the timeframe of limitations, resulting in the case being lost forever the person who was injured could bring legal malpractice lawsuits.

It's important to know that not all mistakes made by attorneys are considered to be malpractice. Errors involving strategy and planning do not typically constitute malpractice, and attorneys have a lot of latitude in making judgment calls so long as they're reasonable.

The law also allows lawyers an enormous amount of discretion to not conduct discovery on behalf of their clients in the event that the error was not unreasonable or a result of negligence. Inability to find important documents or facts like witness statements or medical reports, is a potential example of legal malpractice. Other instances of malpractice include inability to include certain defendants or claims such as omitting to file a survival count in a case of wrongful death, or the repeated and persistent failure to contact a client.

It's also important to note that it must be established that if it weren't the negligence of the lawyer, the plaintiff would have won the case. Otherwise, the plaintiff's claim for malpractice will be denied. This requirement makes the process of bringing legal malpractice lawsuits difficult. This is why it's crucial to hire an experienced attorney to represent you.

Damages

A plaintiff must show that the attorney's actions have caused actual financial losses in order to prevail in a legal malpractice suit. In the case of a lawsuit this has to be demonstrated using evidence, like expert testimony or correspondence between the attorney and client. The plaintiff must also show that a reasonable lawyer could have prevented the harm caused by the negligence of the lawyer. This is referred to as the proximate cause.

Malpractice can manifest in a number of different ways. Some of the most common types of malpractice include failing to adhere to a deadline, which includes a statute of limitations, failing to conduct a conflict-check or any other due diligence on a case, improperly applying the law to a client's case or breaking a fiduciary duty (i.e. merging funds from a trust account with an attorney's own accounts, mishandling a case and not communicating with the client are all examples of malpractice.

Medical malpractice lawsuits typically involve claims for compensation damages. These compensate the victim for expenses out of pocket and losses, including hospital and medical bills, costs of equipment required to aid in recovering, and lost wages. In addition, victims may seek non-economic damages, like pain and suffering as well as loss of enjoyment life and emotional suffering.

In a lot of legal malpractice cases there are lawsuits for punitive as well as compensatory damages. The first compensates the victim for losses caused by the negligence of the attorney while the latter is intended to discourage any future malpractice by the defendant's side.