Medical Malpractice Attorney

What an Attorney Can Do for Your Medical Malpractice Case

A medical malpractice lawyer near you can handle every aspect of your case. This includes:

• Listening to your story and determining how a medical provider’s negligence has affected you
• Determining your damages
• Establishing the elements of medical malpractice
• Getting testimony from an expert witness who can help establish your case
• Negotiating for a fair settlement
• Representing you at trial if that is the best option for you

An attorney can manage the legwork on your case so you can focus on getting the treatment you need. Our law firm partners have access to our vast pool of resources to give you the best chance of success.

Why You Want to Work With The Goldwater Law Firm

Our personal injury law firm works with some of the nation’s largest, most successful firms. You can trust that we have paired you with someone we trust to get you the results you need.

We know how important results are to you, so they are important to us and the firms we work with. We have dedicated our careers to seeking justice for injured people. We won’t let negligent doctors, hospitals, or their insurance companies wiggle out of paying valid claimants.

We will never sit by and allow this corporate greed to go unchecked, especially not at the expense of our clients.

Types of Medical Malpractice Cases Our Co-Counsels Handle

Our law firm partners take various kinds of medical negligence cases, including:

• Misdiagnosis, e.g., diagnosing a heart attack as anxiety
• Delayed diagnosis, e.g., failing to diagnose a tumor present on an X-ray until it has metastasized
• Missed diagnosis, e.g., failing to diagnose a heart attack because symptoms present differently in women than in men
• Failure to order necessary tests, e.g., failing to order further diagnostics after a patient presents with a very low white blood cell count
• Lack of informed consent, i.e., failing to offer all necessary information and alternatives to a specific procedure
• Surgical errors, e.g., wrong-site surgery, wrong-person surgery, leaving a surgical sponge or instrument inside a patient, anesthesia errors, infection, and nerve damage
• Prescription errors, such as prescribing too much or too little of a medication, prescribing the wrong medication, or prescribing a contraindicated medication (i.e., one that reacts with another medication or food)
• Birth injuries, such as shoulder dystocia, Erb’s palsy, cerebral palsy, forceps injury, spinal cord injury, brain damage, etc.

How Our Law Firm Partners Prove Medical Malpractice

To hold a medical provider liable, your attorney must establish medical malpractice. To do so, they must demonstrate:

• There was a valid doctor-patient relationship.
• The medical provider owed you a duty of care. Medical providers owe patients a duty to uphold their industry’s standard of care.
• The medical provider breached their duty of care. We explain what that might look like below.
• The breach was a direct cause of the harm you suffered.
• You sustained damages.

Some states require certificates or affidavits of merit (a review by a medical expert witness) for medical malpractice cases. Your medical malpractice lawyer will let you know if this is required in your case.

What Is Standard of Care?

The standard of care is generally the “minimally competent care” a physician can provide to a patient. Typically, an attorney establishes that a medical provider did not meet the standard of care by having an expert witness (another medical provider, typically in the same field) testify that they would not have behaved the same way in a similar situation.

For example, if your oncologist failed to diagnose your stage 3 breast cancer, your attorney would have an expert witness oncologist explain what they would have done in that situation to prevent a missed diagnosis.

Is Medical Malpractice the Same as Medical Negligence?

No. Medical providers are human and, as such, make human mistakes. This is called medical negligence. It becomes medical malpractice if a medical provider’s mistake causes harm.

Here is an example to help clear up any confusion:

• Medical negligence: A doctor reviews a patient’s scans and misses a tumor. They give the patient a clean bill of health. The next week, they re-review the scans and identify the tumor. They call the patient, have them come in for another scan, and get them into treatment immediately. The tumor did not grow or metastasize; therefore, no harm was done. This is medical negligence.
• Medical malpractice: A doctor reviews a patient’s scans and misses a tumor. They give the patient a clean bill of health. The patient’s health worsens, and they come in again two months later. The doctor orders another scan, compares it to the original scan, and determines that the tumor has grown, making it more difficult to treat. The doctor’s failure to diagnose a tumor caused the patient harm. This is medical malpractice.

Who Can Be Liable for the Harm I Sustained?

Several different parties may be liable for the harm you suffered, including:

• The medical provider (e.g., your primary care physician, surgeon, nurse, oncologist, radiologist, etc.)
• Any person on your medical provider’s team (e.g., surgical tech, anesthesiologist, surgical nurse, physician’s assistant, scrub nurse, circulating nurse, etc.)
• A pharmacist
• Urgent care clinic
• Care clinic
• Hospital
• Nursing home or assisted living facility

Your lawyer will investigate your case to determine what party(s) might be liable for the harm that occurred.

Damages a Medical Malpractice Lawyer Can Help You Recover

The damages you can recover depend on your case. However, our co-counsels regularly recover the following types of damages for victims of medical malpractice and their families.

Economic Damages

Economic damages are your financial expenses and losses, including those you are currently contending with and those you expect in the future. These damages include:

• Medical bills, such as corrective surgeries or treatment, the treatment you did not receive due to misdiagnosis or delayed diagnosis, the costs of more invasive treatments that were required due to a delayed diagnosis, prescription medications, assistive devices, and hospitalization costs
• Lost wages for any time you needed to take off work to recover or attend appointments
• Lost earning capacity if the medical negligence affects your ability to work in the future (e.g., taking a lower-paying job, moving to part-time work, or retiring)
• Miscellaneous expenses related to the effects of the malpractice, such as the costs of renovating your vehicle or your home to accommodate a disabling injury (e.g., widening doorways or installing a handbrake on your car) or the costs of traveling to and from your doctor’s appointments

Non-Economic Damages

Non-economic damages are those without a straightforward monetary value. Your lawyer can work with experts to determine what your non-economic damages could be worth. You may qualify for:

• Pain and suffering
• The inconvenience that comes with an injury or illness
• Emotional distress
• Loss of consortium
• Lost enjoyment of life

Wrongful Death Damages

Unfortunately, patients don’t always survive a medical provider’s negligence. If you lost a loved one due to a medical provider’s negligence, please accept our most sincere condolences. Our law firm partners will seek justice and compensation on your loved one’s behalf, fighting for:

• Medical bills
• Lost support and services
• Loss of consortium
• Pain and suffering
• Emotional anguish
• Loss of guidance and instruction
• Loss of companionship

Can I Afford a Lawyer?

Many people don’t get legal help because they think they can’t afford it. This is a mistake, as medical malpractice cases often require in-depth legal knowledge and experience. They also often require testimony from expert witnesses, which can be costly. If you handle your case on your own, you have to front all of these costs on your own, too.

Our law firm partners take medical malpractice cases on a contingency fee basis. This means they do not take a retainer or upfront fees and handle the costs of obtaining expert witnesses and gathering evidence.

You also only pay them if they recover compensation for you. There is no risk when you get help from our co-counsels in your area.