July 31, 2014
How Do You Prove Medical Negligence?
If substandard medical care has affected your health, you need to be able to prove medical negligence to make a successful malpractice claim. Victims of medical negligence are entitled to compensation for losses their doctors or healthcare providers caused. However, malpractice claims are among the most complex types of injury or wrongful death causes because of the difficulties associated with trying to prove medical negligence.
The San Diego medical malpractice attorneys at Injury Trial Lawyers, APC have extensive experience helping clients to prove medical negligence to malpractice insurers and to juries. We will represent you with no legal fees charged unless we win and we’ll do everything we can to get you the compensation you deserve. Call or contact us as soon as you suspect you or a loved one was harmed by a medical error so we can get to work helping you prove medical negligence and make a claim for compensation.
Elements of Medical Negligence
To prove medical negligence, you need to show:
- The doctor/healthcare provider had some obligation to you. Healthcare providers are held to a professional standard of care. They must provide reasonable quality medical assistance to patients as judged by what a medical practitioner with a similar background would have done under the same circumstances.
- The obligation was breached. You will have to demonstrate that the care provider failed to live up to the professional standard and instead provided substandard care that no reasonable medical professional in his position would have provided.
To obtain monetary damages for medical negligence, you will also need to prove that the medical error or substandard care was the direct cause of some type of harm.
Proving these elements of a malpractice case can be very challenging because it is difficult for the average jury to know what the standard of care is for a doctor or whether it has been breached. Further, the defendant in a malpractice case will often try to argue that your underlying illness or medical problems would have had the same impact on your health regardless of the quality of medical care you received.
You are going to need to make a very strong case to prove medical negligence and get a jury to award you damages or a malpractice insurer to make a reasonable settlement offer. Our personal injury lawyers will help you to get the evidence you need including:
- Medical records.
- Testimony from witnesses who observed the care you received.
- Expert testimony from medical professionals who can establish the standard of care and show how your doctor harmed you.
The defendant in a malpractice case is going to present expert witnesses arguing that he did nothing to hurt you. Your experts will need to contradict this. Often, the case comes down to which witnesses were more credible. This means you need a qualified lawyer with a network of experts who can put together a very strong case and present testimony in a way that is likely to convince the jury you were harmed.
Injury Trial Lawyers, APC has helped many clients to successfully make a medical malpractice claim and prove medical negligence. Call or contact us online today to speak with a member of our legal team and to learn more about how we can represent you.
Injury Trial Lawyers, APC
1230 Columbia Street #560
San Diego, CA 92101
(619) 525-7007