A personal injury lawyer is a lawyer who handles no other type of case but personal injury. They are up to date on the laws regarding personal injury and medical malpractice and can represent your best interests and protect your rights.
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Medical malpractice kills about 80,000 people every year and injures far more. It is estimated that only two percent of malpractice victims seek compensation. Many people do not understand what constitutes malpractice or realize that they may have a case.
An unsatisfactory medical outcome does not necessarily constitute malpractice. Medical procedures carry risks and some treatments are not successful, even when doctors do everything right. Medical malpractice is treatment by any type of health care professional which does not meet the standard level of care and results in harm to the patient. Failing to take a necessary action or taking an inappropriate action are both malpractice, when they cause harm
Basic elements of malpractice
In order to have a medical malpractice case three elements must exist:
• There must have been a professional relationship between you and the health care provider – this establishes responsibility. Simply calling a doctor’s office out of the phone book to ask a question does not constitute a doctor/patient relationship.
• The health care provider must have acted beneath the standard level of care that any other health care provider would have used in the same situation.
• The substandard care must have caused you harm.
Not just doctors
Many people are under the impression that medical malpractice is limited to mistakes made by their physicians or surgeons and does not include areas of medicine such as dentistry and psychiatry, or believe that they cannot sue if they chose an elective procedure, such a cosmetic surgery. Medical malpractice applies to all fields of medicine and no health care provider is excused from meeting the standard level of care simply because your procedure was a choice rather than a necessity.
Individual health care professionals can be held responsible for their actions, and so can the institutions that they work for. Often an institution is held liable due to its policies, such as a hospital being held liable for patient dumping or unsanitary conditions. When a medication is the cause of harm the pharmaceutical company may also be held responsible, or may be solely responsible, making your case a product liability case.
Medical malpractice cases can have multiple responsible parties including, but not limited to:
• Doctors
• Dentists
• Psychiatrists
• Surgeons
• Anesthesiologists
• Nurses
• Emergency room staff
• Hospitals
• Nursing homes
• Government institutions
• Pharmaceutical companies
What you need to do
Medical malpractice lawsuits are complex, but they are often your only hope for getting the quality medical care that you need to recover from the harm you were caused, or compensation for disabilities which prevent you from making a living or simply enjoying life as you would have without having been a victim of malpractice. If a loved one has been one of the 80,000 victims a year who did not survive medical malpractice, you may be entitled to compensation for wrongful death.
Pursuing a medical malpractice claim is more than seeking financial compensation for yourself and your family. It is incentive for negligent or incompetent health care professionals to clean up their act, and may save the next victim from harm.
If you or a loved one has been the victim of medical malpractice you should:
• Contact an experienced medical malpractice attorney.
• Write down everything that has happened so far and how it has affected your life, and start keeping a journal of how it affects you every day.
• Get copies of all of your medical records.
• Keep receipts for all of your expenses resulting from the malpractice
• Keep a record of all lost income caused by the malpractice
• Seek an independent medical assessment (your attorney may recommend a specialist)
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With the traffic in Austin increasing at an exponential rate, it only serves to follow that the rate of accidents is increasing in our city. If you’re in an accident the first thing you should do is stop your vehicle, turn on your hazard lights, and if necessary, move it to a safe position near the location of the accident. Texas law requires that you stop at the accident scene; failure to do so could result in serious repercussions which can lead to a traffic ticket or a warrant for your arrest.
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Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is an injury to the brain where any type of sudden impact to the head is severe enough to damage brain tissue. According to the Brain Injury Association of America, about 1.4 million Americans suffer a TBI every year, and of that number:
• 1.1 million receive emergency room treatment and are released
• 50,000 die of their injury
• 235,000 are hospitalized for treatment
Those numbers are taken from hospital statistics, so the number of people who sustain TBIs but do not go to any emergency room in a hospital is not known.
Causes of TBI
Most (about 28%) are caused by falls of one sort or another. Road accidents and being struck on the head in other types of accidents account for about 20% each. About 11% are caused by violent assaults. For military personnel on active duty in a war zone, explosions are the principle TBI cause.
Those at highest risk for a TBI
• Gender – Males sustain a TBI about 1.5 times as often as a female
• Age – Two age groups have the highest risk:
• Children from babyhood to four years of age
• Adolescents from 15 to 19 years of age
• Occupation – Military personnel have the highest risk, especially paratroopers
• Race – African Americans have the highest TBI death rate
Types of TBI
Because the brain controls every aspect of human behavior, ability, and functioning, a TBI can cause uncountable constellations of impairment. Each injured person has a unique combination of disabilities, according to where exactly the brain was injured, how severely, how much bruising and bleeding resulted, and other factors that can be quite medically complex.
TBIs can be:
• Focal or diffuse – that is, confined to one brain area, or extending over several
• Open or closed – that is, caused by something penetrating through the skull or by an impact to the skull
• Mild, moderate, or severe – according to any of several classification systems, such as the Glasgow Coma Scale
• Primary or secondary
Primary and Secondary Brain Injuries
In many fatal TBIs, death does not occur immediately, but only after days or weeks. What happens in those days or weeks are the secondary injuries. They are not well-understood. Examples are brain swelling, changes in blood flow, a decrease in the acidity/alkalinity of the brain (the pH), and free radical overload (free radicals are molecules with an unpaired electron. They try to pair up that single electron by combining with other molecules, which can cause tissue damage.)
Effects of a TBI on Consciousness
In increasing order of severity, these are the abnormal states of consciousness that a TBI can cause:
• Stupor – The person is unresponsive, but can be aroused by a strong stimulus
• Coma – Total unconsciousness which may end, with the person regaining consciousness
• Persistent vegetative state – the person is unconscious but has periods of alertness and a cycle of sleeping and waking
• Minimally conscious state – apparently unconscious, but shows periodic deliberateness of movement
• Locked-in Syndrome – the person is awake and aware of their surroundings, but is completely paralyzed. Communications can be done through eye movements or blinking, in a mutually arranged code. There is a book written by means of such a code, by a French author and editor of the magazine Elle, named Jean-Dominique Bauby. He and his speech therapist developed a code where Bauby blinked his left eye, and the resulting book, translated as The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly, was published in March, 1997.
When a TBI is caused by someone else’s negligence, there may be a valid legal claim for compensation. Such negligence could be failing to keep premises safe, driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, or failing to properly supervise an elderly person in a nursing home. When the immediate medical attention has been obtained and the injured person is somewhat stabilized, it would be worth while learning more about possible legal action. The first step would be to consult with an experienced personal injury attorney.
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Whether it’s spilled milk on the floor at a grocery store, a cracked pavement, or a missing handrail, thousands of people every year are injured, many seriously, by a dangerous condition on someone else’s property. When this happens, the injured person may have a “premises liability claim.”
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Surgical errors are among the most serious forms of medical malpractice; approximately 98,000 hospital patients die each year as a result of such errors. How and why are surgical errors committed?
Although surgeries vary greatly in scope, patients risk injury any time they submit to any kind of surgery. Surgical errors can be committed by anyone on the health care team overseeing a procedure, from the surgeon to the anesthesiologist to the nursing staff. Health care providers are prone to the same stressors people in other industries are: they are sometimes overworked, overwhelmed, rushed, or inadequately trained. Unfortunately, such conditions can produce errors that often lead to patient illness, injury, or death.
Types of Surgical Errors
The following are common types of medical malpractice through surgical error:
• Commission: In errors of commission, surgeons perform the wrong procedure. These types of errors include operating on the wrong part of the body, performing unnecessary surgeries, and so on. For example, surgeons who amputate the wrong limb or who mix up patients have committed errors of commission.
• Omission: Surgical teams who commit errors of omission neglect to provide patients with necessary care. For example, a surgeon who does not perform an appendectomy when it is medically necessary has committed this type of error.
• Execution: Execution errors include incorrectly performed procedures. Even if such errors do not result in serious injury, they indicate that a procedure did not produce the desired results. For example, a Cesarean section that causes brain injury in an infant is an improperly executed procedure.
In addition to the above categories, surgical errors occur when surgical teams use unsterile instruments, leave instruments inside patients’ bodies, incorrectly administer anesthesia, and neglect to inform patients of potential risks and dangers.
Types of Surgery in Which Errors Are Common
The following procedures are particularly prone to surgical error:
• Childbirth
• Gastric bypass
• Cardiac surgeries
• Thoracic surgeries
• Cosmetic surgeries (such as liposuction and breast augmentation)
Although this list includes types of surgery most likely to include surgical error, it is important to remember that malpractice can occur during any procedure, no matter how routine or seemingly minor.
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With the ever-growing trend in accountability, it seems that it’s always possible to find someone else to blame for your misfortune. Many of these crazy claims have been well documented, especially in the USA where such practices began, and where there always seems to be someone trying to sue someone else for something rather strange, often without success. However, despite these sometimes almost unbelievable compensation cases, the vast majority of accident claims are perfectly legitimate, but not particularly interesting, and are therefore unlikely to receive any coverage from the press.
In 1993, a man who was driving in New Jersey crashed his car into another vehicle after spilling his McDonalds’ milkshake on his lap. The driver of the other car attempted to sue McDonalds, claiming the restaurant should have cautioned against eating whilst driving. Not surprisingly the case was unsuccessful, though it generated a huge amount of interest from the press.
In 1994, a student from the University of Idaho tried to sue the institution after he fell from his third floor dorm window whilst he was ‘mooning’ other students. His claimed that the university had failed to provide a safe environment for students, but the case was unsuccessful and he received nothing but the ridicule of his fellow peers.
With these two cases it’s fairly easy to see that the accuser was in the wrong, however not all bizarre claims are so clear cut. American Carl Cornett was tucking into a bag of salted peanuts when he bit down on something hard. He spat the object into his hand to discover it was a tooth. It wasn’t his though, or even another human’s; it turned out to be the gnasher of an unidentified animal. The man made a personal injury claim against the company responsible for the peanuts, stating that the creature’s fang had led him to becoming physically and mentally ill.
One interesting aspect of injury claims, is that most people would consider them to be a modern phenomenon; an affliction of the 21st century. But in fact, there is a long history of personal injury compensation as the laws of King Alfred the Great, which go back to the late 9th century, show. Among his laws were such rulings as: “If anyone knocks out a man’s eye, he shall give him 66 shillings, six pence and the third part of a penny as compensation” and “If a dog tears or bites a man, six shillings shall be paid for the first offence.”
Whilst a very small proportion of today’s cases seem to be due to the accident victim’s lack of common sense, the vast majority of claims are perfectly legitimate, and come about due to serious negligence of an individual or business. Of course, these rather mundane and normal accident claims don’t tend to make the headlines in the papers.
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There are varied reasons of personal injuries. These harms may be incurred from accidents, negligence and, in some instances, from deliberate or intentional infliction.
In the same manner, personal injury laws are vast and classified according to their degree, severity and manner of infliction.
It would be wise to illustrate in a condensed form, some of the component areas of personal injury. In these respect, they are the following:
• Back and Neck injury
• Birth injury
• Brain injury
• Burn injuries
• Accidents, including car, motorcycle, train aviation, slip and fall, construction and sea accidents
• Premise liability
• Defective products, toxic molds, pharmaceutical
• Dog bites
• Medical Negligence
• Workplace injuries, and workers compensation
• Wrongful death cases
Personal injuries in the foregoing enumeration have different treatment in terms of the legal claims that involve in it.
There are different legal implications of each type of personal injuries. Consequently, varied approaches and responses are engaged in the impending legal battles.
To illuminate more closely, responses of the following headings are worthwhile. The headings namely, accident response, negligence response and deliberate injury responses.
Personal injury responses in an accident:
1. Take proper action to prevent additional injuries or at lest lessen the same.
2. Medical treatment should be a primordial concern
3. Call the police and other authorities to investigate and report pertinent facts.
4. If possible, gather evidence and identifying information relevant to your claim.
5. Right in time, confer with a personal injury attorney so that your claim properly coached and organized for trial. In this wise, the attorney concerned will assess all possible options of your claims, the legal exceptions, and prescriptions of actions as well as the proper negotiation with the insurance company when necessary.
6. At most, the legal remedy would be a tort action and consequent claim for damages.
Personal injury responses in negligence cases:
1. Prevention of injuries or minimize the same.
2. Like any other cases, timely medical attention is primordial.
3. Confer with the negligent culprit regarding the injury and file the necessary report with the authorities.
4. If able, gather necessary evidences that would substantiate your claim including the medical records.
5. Mostly, confer with a personal injury lawyer who has vast expertise in handling negligence cases. This will ensure that you will get the compensation you fairly deserve in reference to your injury.
The legal exceptions, statute of limitations as well as proper representation in your insurance claim are also considered.
6. Same as above, the legal remedy would be a tort action and consequent claim for damages.
Responses in personal injury deliberately inflicted:
The infliction of injuries that deliberately inflicted may bring both civil and criminal actions.
1. The victims must consider same responses lay above. The timely medical attention, gathering of evidentiary matters, filing of necessary incident reports and reporting with the proper authorities shall be primary considerations.
2. The conference with a lawyer in this respect is crucial, particularly in the aspect of evaluating your options and taking the proper legal actions.
3. Criminal prosecution as well as civil action for damages is the options after the attorney makes proper assessment of the claim.
To cap things, taking the proper personal Injury responses is important for the protection and substantiation of your claims.
In the entire cycle, the personal injury lawyers will assist you through the process, evaluate your claim and give you fair representations of your case.
Our Los Angeles lawyers are well respected in the field of handling any type of personal injury and wrongful death claims. For free evaluation of your case, log on to our website and fill out our form.
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It has been estimated that more than three million people are injured every year due to personal injury accidents that should have been avoided. These accidents could occur on the road, at work, in a public place, a slip trip or fall or due to medical negligence. All of these are known as personal injury and if they occurred through no fault of your own then you could be entitled to compensation. In more cases then none these accidents do occur due to the negligence of another person.
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With her second child due in a matter of days, Holby City actress Tina Hobley is understandably apprehensive about giving birth to her second child. However, unlike most expectant mothers Hobley has an additional anxiety to cope with - the last time she was in hospital the superbug MRSA nearly cost her the use of her left arm.
In an interview with the Daily Mail, Tina revealed that in 2004, after falling awkwardly she broke her left wrist and was admitted to hospital. The break was severe enough to require pins so she was operated on and discharged from the next morning.
After three days she noticed bleeding through the cast. Hospital medics assured her the bleeding would stop but ten days later she was suffering from a high temperature and severe pain, while the arm itself had begun to smell like rotting flesh.
Doctors removed the cast and discovered a serious infection in the wound, later diagnosed as MRSA. Tina required a further operation to clean the wound; over the next few weeks the wound required regular cleaning and several different antibiotics were tried until an effective treatment was found.
MRSA is a common bacterium found on the skin, which is normally benign. However, if the bacterium enters the bloodstream it can be extremely dangerous as it is resistant to common forms of antibiotic. It is estimated that MRSA is responsible for around 5,000 deaths a year.
The medical profession usually provide a caring service with a high standard of excellence. However there are occasions when patients treated on the NHS or privately may be the victim of a medical accident. When that accident is attributable to incompetence or lack of care, it may be possible to bring a claim for clinical negligence compensation.
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