Here's What You Need To Know
In this article, I want to talk about what you need to know and what information you should collect so that you’ve got it, if you’re calling a lawyer about a Medical Malpractice case.
Before Calling A Lawyer
Let's say, you are calling a medical malpractice lawyer, but on behalf of somebody else. So, your brother or your cousin or your husband or wife or parents or your child was the victim of medical malpractice. And now you suspect what information do you need and you should collect so that you've got it if you're calling a lawyer about a medical malpractice case. So, it started with an email, somebody sent me an email and then I spoke with the gentleman who wanted to call regarding a medical malpractice case regarding his brother.
The problem is he didn’t really have any of the information, he didn’t know what he thought the doctors did wrong, he didn’t know exactly when it was, and that was wrong since he didn’t know a lot of details about the medical care or treatment. It made the case hard for me to evaluate or provide any useful information so that’s why I decided to make an article about it. If you’re calling regarding a medical malpractice situation, here are the things you need to know before calling a lawyer. Of course, you can always call a lawyer, but with at least the basic information so they’re able to give you feedback. Like the important details in your case and to determine whether it is a good case or the worth of the case.
Get The Date When It Happened
The first thing is the date or approximate date of the doctor’s mistake. So medical malpractice case you get two years from the date of the doctor’s mistake to file a claim. It could be a hospital or a nurse or another medical malpractice. Let’s say it is the doctor’s mistake for shorthand, but what did they do wrong? And when did they do it wrong? The date is important because now you know that you can only file a claim within two years and if you missed that deadline, then you’re out of luck, you can’t file a claim anymore.
It is important because there’s a lot of investigation that needs to be done on medical malpractice cases, so we’ve got to get all the medical records. We might have to get old medical records if you’ve got a complex medical history. It can be quite difficult to assemble, all the information if you wait to talk to a lawyer within the two-year deadline.
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What Did The Doctor Do Wrong?
The second thins you need to have some idea is what you think the doctor did wrong. They can find that out by talking to their loved one or getting their loved ones the medical records or even just sitting down and thinking about it. To check if there was a bad outcome from your loved one but check what it is specifically that you think the doctor or hospital did wrong. Lawyers do personal injury, but lawyers who do a lot of medical malpractice know a fair amount about medicine as it pertains to whether the courts allow a medical malpractice case to go forward based on a decision by a doctor.
So, it might be that you or your family member suspect that there’s malpractice, but it turns out that the courts have looked at those situations and have decided that it’s not medical malpractice. A lawyer will be able to tell you that if you can tell the lawyer the exact circumstances and you know exactly what you think the doctor or doctors did wrong.
It may not be the best practice, but it’s not medical malpractice.
What Will Be The Outcome Of The Case?
The third thing I want to tell you is, you know medical malpractice cases are quite expensive because before we even file a lawsuit, we need to have a medical malpractice expert for every specialty that is pertinent to your case. In some case, it’s just a surgeon, but sometimes, we’re alleging that the surgeon screwed up, the anesthesiologist screwed up, and the nurses screwed up. That’s the three experts and incases like that, you can easily hit high five figure figures or six figures in case costs before you even file a lawsuit because the costs and the amount of work and effort medical malpractice cases require.
We need to have some idea of what the outcome is, in other words, was it a real big scare or is there really a huge life-changing consequences to the bad medical care. Here’s the analogy, let’s say we’re crossing the street on a green light and a car runs the red light and runs into me and breaks both of my legs. Well, that’s a good case because it’s clear what the other side did was wrong. I was doing what I was supposed to be doing, crossing on a green in the crosswalk, and then the case is big enough to justify us spending quite a bit of resources to win the case because I had two broken legs.
Is The Case Worth It?
Same scenario, I am crossing the street on a green light in the crosswalk and another car comes and runs the red light and almost runs into me, but scares me, and I am furious like, “Oh my god, that driver somebody should take his license he almost killed me.” All of that is true, the problem is he didn’t hurt me, he didn’t kill me or maybe his rear-view mirror on the passenger side of his car hit my arm and gave me a good bruise. But three weeks later, the bruise was mostly healed, and I got a minimum of medical care because of it. Same situation, but the injury and the consequence of the bad action is so small that it wouldn’t make sense for us to invest a ton of time and money into a case like that.
If injuries are just not big enough, that means you know cases settle based on how big the injury is, the bigger the injury, the more money the case is worth. And that makes sense to a broken leg might be worth five figures or six figures if a person can't walk or even higher. But a bumper bruise is going to be worth a small amount of money and so that's why in medical malpractice cases, we need to have some idea of what the outcome is for the person, who's the victim of the medical malpractice.
If a doctor makes a mistake, that is a terrible thing whether they cause you a devastating injury or whether it's not, you know whether they don't hurt you that bad or don't hurt you at all. It's still horrible if a doctor is doing something obviously wrong, the problem is that with a horrible decision by a doctor, what can we expect to get at trial? A thousand dollars, ten thousand dollars? Well, the problem is if it costs me fifty thousand dollars to get the expert witnesses, we need to prove the case we go to trial. We litigate the case for three or four years before finally we can go to trial and the jury gives us ten thousand dollars. We're now forty thousand dollars in debt, so that's the point and that's why all lawyers you talk to are always going to want to know what the outcome in this case is. If God forbid, somebody passes away, there are only certain people who can bring the lawsuit on behalf of the deceased person. For example, if your spouse is killed by a medical malpractice, God forbid, you as the spouse, as the married partner of that person, has a right to do it and as the child of a parent, you can do it as well.
So, I hope that answers your question and if you or a loved one needs a lawyer, please give me a call, you can reach me 24/7 at 312-500-4500.
