Medical malpractice and professional malpractice attorney.

MEDICAL MALPRACTICE/PROFESSIONAL MALPRACTICE

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Professional liability claim are another form of tort actions that may be asserted. Professional liability claims may come in the form of medical malpractice actions, legal malpractice actions or architectural malpractice actions. In many states the medical profession has been granted certain special protections.

For instance, some states have imposed a cap or a limitation on the amount of money that can be recovered against any doctor or health care provider as a result of their negligence. The theory behind that cap on damages is to help hold down the cost of medical malpractice insurance coverage for health care providers. In addition, some states have imposed special requirements that must be met before a doctor or a health care provider can be sued.

In some states the plaintiff must have the claim reviewed by a medical malpractice review panel which then makes a preliminary determination as to whether the claim has any merit. The decision rendered by the medical malpractice review panel may in some instances be admissible in evidence if the case is tried in front of a jury.

A professional liability claim is different from any other type of tort claim that may be asserted because within these types of claims the plaintiff has to typically present testimony from a witness who has some expertise in that field as to what is the standard of care that should have been adhered to by that professional person and then present evidence as to the breach of that standard of care and how that breach caused damage to the plaintiff.

In a medical malpractice action, that testimony normally comes from another medical doctor in the same field of expertise as the defendant that is bing sued. The same concept applies in legal malpractice actions and also in architectural malpractice actions. There could be some instances wherein expert testimony would not be necessary because the negligence is so obvious that there is no need for expert testimony to establish what the standard of care is. For instance if a patient goes into the hospital for an operation on the right knee and the doctor ends up operating on the left knee, obviously there is no need for expert testimony to establish that the standard of care is that the doctor should have operated on the right knee. Any reasonable person would know that the operation on the left knee was unnecessary and therefore was negligent on the doctor’s part.

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