Legal and Justice Book

Archive for the ‘Medical Malpractice’ Category

Lawyers, also called attorneys, provide legal representation to individuals. These professionals are considered experts in the law and are supposed to provide clients with the best services possible.

However, in some cases, lawyers intentionally or unintentionally make mistakes or bad decisions during a case.

This sometimes means that they are guilty of legal malpractice and negligence. This is a serious issue for both the lawyer and the person she represents.

Definition of Malpractice

As defined by legal-malpractice.lawyers.com, legal malpractice is the failure of an attorney to give a client professional services with a sufficient level of competence.

Legal malpractice prevents a client from receiving an adequate defense or collecting reasonable monetary rewards from a defendant.

Key Features

There are three key features of legal malpractice. The first feature is negligence. Legal malpractice also involves a breach of fudiciary duty and a breach of contract.

According to legal-malpractice.lawyers.com, the feature emphasized most often in legal malpractice cases is negligence.
Negligence vs. Malpractice

Negligence and malpractice are related but are not the same thing. Lectlaw.com and A.P. Pishevar & Associates explain that negligence means that a person acted carelessly–i.e., that he didn’t act the way most reasonable people would given the same circumstances.

To prove negligence (and therefore malpractice), one must prove that the mistake the lawyer made resulted in some kind of foreseeable damage (injury or loss) for the client, according to John Blumberg of the Blumberg Law Offices. Read the rest of this entry »

Medical malpractice cases are designed to provide individuals injured do to the negligence of a health-care provider the ability to obtain appropriate compensation. All medical malpractice cases require testimony from an expert.

An expert is a health-care professional with proven experience and education in regard to the specific area of practice in which you suffered an injury.

Function

The primary function of a medical malpractice case is to establish a specific legal process through which you obtain appropriate compensation for all damages and losses sustained due to the negligent action or inaction of a particular health-care provider.

Time Frame

The laws from one state to another vary slightly as to the time frame in which a medical malpractice case must be filed. The typical time frames are either two or three years from the date of the injury.

Some states start the clock running from the date you discovered the injury or reasonably should have discovered the injury. If you fail to file a medical malpractice lawsuit within this time frame, you forever are precluded from suing the health-care provider. Read the rest of this entry »