Medical malpractice cases are some of the most complex civil claims. While doctors make mistakes every day, not every medical mistake will make a good medical malpractice case. There are complicated legal issues as well as financial factors that must all be accounted for in order to warrant filing a medical malpractice lawsuit. The legal and financial factors necessary are:-
Medical Negligence, Damages and Causation
Negligence
Negligence refers to a doctor’s error or more precisely, deviation from the accepted medical standard of care. For a given medical treatment, there is a standard of care that outlines the general procedures for diagnosing and treating a patient.
For example, a surgeon is required to maintain a certain level hygiene prior to surgery to minimize the possibility of the patient acquiring an infection. If the surgeon (or medical staff) fails to properly disinfect the surgical instruments, this also may be grounds for negligence.
Injury
In civil injury law (which includes medical malpractice), the term injury refers to a wrongdoing to a person for which compensation may be awarded.
Common damages in a medical malpractice case are medical expenses, lost income, future lost earnings, future medical costs, pain and suffering and other less common damages.
Causation
Causation is the legal requirement and evidence that links the medical negligence to the injury. One of the most difficult elements to prove in a medical malpractice case is exactly how negligent medical care directly leads to an undue patient injury.
The Result
All this legal terminology essentially comes down to one sentence. A patient was treated negligently, and as a result, suffered undue injury.
Once this can be established through the evidence and expert testimony, then the case is said to be “meritorious”.
Money in Medical Malpractice
Medical malpractice cases are uniquely complicated and expensive to investigate and prosecute. Since medical malpractice lawyers almost always work on an emergency basis, they often have to spend upwards of $50,000 just to investigate the claim, build a case and file the lawsuit.
If the damages involved in the case do not warrant an award large enough to cover the costs of the suit and adequately compensate the victim, then a medical malpractice attorney will have to advise the client to walk away. It’s not always fair, but it’s the way our legal system is setup and it does filter out all but the most serious cases of medical malpractice.