Medical bainbridge malpractice lawyer Lawsuits

Attorneys hold a fiduciary relationship with their clients and are required to behave with care, diligence and expertise. However, like all professionals attorneys make mistakes.

Every mistake made by an attorney can be considered legal jacksonville malpractice lawyer. To prove legal negligence the victim must demonstrate duty, breach of duty, causation and damage. Let's look at each of these elements.

Duty

Medical professionals and doctors take an oath that they will use their expertise and knowledge to treat patients and not cause additional harm. The legal right of a patient to compensation for injuries suffered from medical malpractice is based on the concept of the duty of care. Your attorney can determine if your doctor's actions breached the duty of care and if the breach caused injury or illness.

Your lawyer must establish that the medical professional was bound by a fiduciary duty to act with reasonable skill and care. To prove that the relationship existed, you could require evidence like the records of your doctor-patient, eyewitness statements and expert testimony from doctors who have similar experiences, education and training.

Your lawyer will also have to prove that the medical professional violated their duty of caring in not adhering to the accepted standards in their area of expertise. This is commonly called negligence. Your attorney will compare what the defendant did to what a reasonable individual would do in the same situation.

Finally, your lawyer must show that the defendant's breach of duty directly caused injury or loss to you. This is referred to as causation. Your lawyer will make use of evidence like your medical records, 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 owes patients duties of care that adhere to the standards of medical professional practice. If a doctor doesn't meet those standards, and the failure results in an injury or medical malpractice, then negligence could result. Typically, expert testimony from medical professionals with similar qualifications, training or certifications will help determine what the standard of care should be in a particular circumstance. State and federal laws, along with guidelines from the institute, help define what doctors are required to provide for specific types of patients.

To prevail in a malpractice case the case must be proved that the doctor breached his or her duty of care and that this breach was the direct cause of injury. In legal terms, this is referred to as the causation factor and it is crucial that it is established. For example, if a broken arm requires an x-ray the doctor should properly place the arm and put it in a cast for proper healing. If the doctor did not perform this task and the patient was left with an unavoidable loss of use of that arm, then malpractice could have occurred.

Causation

Attorney malpractice claims are founded on the evidence that a lawyer made errors that resulted in financial losses for the client. For example, if a lawyer fails to file a lawsuit within the statute of limitations, which results in the case being lost for ever and the victim can bring legal malpractice actions.

It's important to recognize that not all mistakes made by attorneys are malpractice. Strategies and mistakes aren't usually considered to be a violation of the law and lawyers have lots of freedom to make judgment calls as long as they are reasonable.

The law also grants attorneys considerable latitude to not perform discovery on behalf of their clients, so long as the failure was not unreasonable or negligence. Inability to find important documents or facts, such as medical or witness statements or medical reports, could be an instance of legal malpractice. Other instances of malpractice could be a failure to add certain claims or defendants such as failing to submit a survival count in a wrongful death case, or the repeated and persistent failure to contact clients.

It is also important to remember that it must be established that, if not the negligence of the lawyer, the plaintiff would have won the underlying case. If not, the plaintiff's claims for malpractice will be rejected. This makes it very difficult to bring an action for legal tukwila malpractice law firm. For this reason, it's crucial to hire an experienced attorney to represent you.

Damages

To win a legal malpractice case, a plaintiff must demonstrate actual financial losses that result from the actions of an attorney. In a lawsuit, this must be proven through evidence, like expert testimony or correspondence between the client and attorney. In addition the plaintiff must demonstrate that a reasonable lawyer would have prevented the harm caused by the attorney's negligence. This is referred to as the proximate cause.

The causes of malpractice vary. The most frequent mistakes include: not meeting a deadline or statute of limitations; failing to perform an examination of a conflict on a case; applying the law improperly to a client's situation; or breaking the fiduciary obligation (i.e. merging funds from a trust account 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 most medical malpractice cases the plaintiff is seeking compensatory damages. These compensate the victim for the out-of-pocket expenses and losses, like medical and hospital bills, costs of equipment that aids in recovery, and lost wages. Victims may also claim non-economic damages, such as pain and discomfort as well as loss of enjoyment from their lives, as well as emotional suffering.

Legal malpractice cases typically involve claims for compensatory as well as punitive damages. The former compensates the victim for the loss resulting from the negligence of the attorney, whereas the latter is intended to discourage future malpractice by the defendant.