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Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Attorneys hold a fiduciary relationship with their clients and are expected to act with care, diligence and skill. But, as with all professionals, attorneys make mistakes.

A mistake made by an attorney can be considered malpractice. To prove legal malpractice, an victim must prove duty, breach, causation and damage. Let's take a look at each of these aspects.

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 be compensated for injuries sustained from medical malpractice rests on the notion of the duty of care. Your attorney can determine if your doctor's actions violated the duty to care and if those breaches caused injury or illness.

To prove a duty to care, your lawyer has to demonstrate that a medical professional has a legal relationship with you in which they have a fiduciary obligation to perform their duties with an acceptable level of skill and care. This relationship may be proven through eyewitness testimony, doctor-patient records, and expert testimony of doctors with similar education, experience and training.

Your lawyer will also need to demonstrate that the medical professional violated their duty of care by failing to adhere to the accepted standards in their area of expertise. This is often referred to as negligence, and your attorney will evaluate the defendant's conduct to what a reasonable individual would take in the same scenario.

Your lawyer will also need to prove that the defendant's breach directly contributed to your loss or injury. This is referred to as causation. Your attorney will use 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 main reason for the loss or injury to you.

Breach

A doctor is bound by a duty of care to his patients that corresponds to professional medical standards. If a doctor fails to adhere to these standards and that failure results in injury, then medical malpractice or negligence could occur. Typically expert testimony from medical professionals who have the same training, qualifications or certifications will help determine what the appropriate standard of care is in a specific 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 prevail in a malpractice lawsuit it must be proven that the doctor violated his or duty of care and that this breach was the direct cause of injury. In legal terms, this is called the causation component and it is crucial to establish. For instance an injured arm requires an xray the doctor must properly set the arm and then place it in a cast for proper healing. If the doctor fails to do this and the patient suffers a permanent loss in use of the arm, malpractice could have taken place.

Causation

Attorney malpractice claims are built on the basis of evidence that a lawyer made mistakes that resulted in financial losses to the client. For instance, if a lawyer fails to file a lawsuit within the prescribed time of limitations, resulting in the case being lost forever the party who suffered damages could bring legal malpractice lawsuits.

It is crucial to be aware that not all errors made by attorneys are malpractice. The mistakes that involve strategy and planning are not usually considered to be malpractice, and attorneys have plenty of discretion in making judgment calls so long as they're reasonable.

The law also grants attorneys the right to refuse to conduct discovery on behalf of a client as long as the failure was not unreasonable or a result of negligence. Legal malpractice is committed when a lawyer fails to find important documents or information, such as medical reports or witness statements. Other instances of malpractice include the failure to add certain defendants or claims, for instance forgetting a survival count for an unjustly-dead case or the constant failure to communicate with clients.

It is also important to note the fact that the plaintiff has to prove that if not for the lawyer's careless conduct they would have prevailed. The claim of the plaintiff for malpractice will be dismissed if it's not proved. This makes the process of bringing legal malpractice lawsuits difficult. Therefore, it's important to find an experienced attorney to represent you.

Damages

A plaintiff must show that the attorney's actions resulted in actual financial losses to win a legal malpractice lawsuit. This should be proved in a lawsuit through evidence such as expert testimony, correspondence between client and attorney or billing records, and other documents. A plaintiff must also prove that a reasonable attorney could have prevented the damage caused by the lawyer's negligence. This is known as proximate causation.

Malpractice occurs in many ways. Some of the most common kinds of malpractice are the failure to meet a deadline, for example, the statute of limitation, failure 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. mixing funds from a trust account with an attorney's own accounts or handling a case in a wrong manner, and not communicating with the client are all examples of malpractice.

In most medical malpractice cases, the plaintiff will seek compensation damages. They compensate the victim for the out-of-pocket expenses and losses, such as medical and hospital bills, the cost of equipment that aids in recovery, and loss of wages. Additionally, victims may claim non-economic damages, such as suffering and suffering or loss of enjoyment life, and emotional stress.

Legal malpractice cases often involve claims for compensatory and punitive damages. The former compensates the victim for losses resulting from the negligence of an attorney, while the latter is intended to discourage future misconduct by the defendant.