If you or a loved one has been the victim of medical malpractice, you know how life turns upside down after the incident. The repercussions are wide-ranging. Your health is affected adversely. The quality of your life decreases. You are emotionally upset. Even your work life can suffer.
If you (God forbid!) have to file a medical malpractice case, you will have to make your way through a maze of legal jargon. “Informed consent” is one phrase that will crop up occasionally. Know what it means to figure out if you have a medical malpractice case at all. This will save you many trips to the attorney’s office.
Medical malpractice cases rest on the premise of “standard of care.” If you have been a victim of an incident of medical malpractice, you will have to prove that a medical professional treating you has breached the norms of standard of care to prove the validity of your case and claim damages. You should know the meaning of the phrase, its implications, the instances when standard of care is deemed to have been breached, and the exceptions to the norm.
Although patients in New York rely on the expertise of their doctors and other health care providers, they should still take steps to protect themselves from medical mistakes. Researchers consistently find that misdiagnosis is the leading category of medical error.
A patient suffers serious injuries when a surgery becomes a catastrophe. The doctor on the other hand, argues in his defense that he has never encountered a complication like this before, and therefore he should not be held accountable for it happening in this instance. Can the patient’s lawyer object to this during the trial? Can the plaintiff’s lawyer prevent the doctor from telling this to the jury?
When you have filed a personal injury case, and your doctor agrees to come and testify on your behalf at trial, do you have to pay him? The answer is yes, you will have to pay your doctor to come in and testify. It would be sort of selfish to assume they will spend a day or two in court and not receive some type of financial compensation.
Judgment Call a Common Defense
In your medical malpractice trial in New York, where there are many details and facts that the jury needs to know and consider, should your lawyer give a two-hour opening argument at the beginning of the trial?
You have suffered a significant fracture of the femur in an accident, which is the biggest bone in the body, and you have filed a personal injury case to claim compensation. Your case has come all the way to trial, and now during jury selection, one of the jurors tells your lawyer that he has suffered the same type of fracture, but his injuries were not permanent.
Some people like to keep a diary, a log, or a journal, and they note down their innermost or private thoughts in it. They write things that motivate them or things that are troubling them that nobody else sees. Now, suppose you keep such a diary, and during the course of your medical malpractice lawsuit, you windup recording details about your injuries and how they have affected you.
