Steps To Prepare For A Personal Injury/Malpractice Suit
With a simple personal injury, you may decide to simply file a claim through your insurance agency. But when a medical professional makes a mistake that affects the outcome of your injury, the situation is immediately more complicated and will require a trial. Here are some steps to prepare for a joint personal injury/malpractice lawsuit.
Find a Lawyer
You'll need to find a personal injury attorney who also feels comfortable in the realm of medical malpractice. Ideally, this would mean that they have some technical medical expertise or even training. This would allow them to understand in depth what the doctor's responsibilities were and how they failed you as a patient.
Gather Medical Evidence
Your personal injury lawyer will advise you on the kinds of medical documentation to get for your trial. This should include records of any medical appointments that you have attended so far. Hopefully, you can get a record of each medical professional's prognosis of your injury up to this point. There may be a clear change in prognosis as a result of something your negligible doctor did or didn't do; your lawyer can study the data to see if there's a compelling story for how the doctor affected your illness.
Part of showing medical malpractice may be to get other professionals' opinions about your injury. If you feel that your doctor's advice or treatment was blatantly wrong, then having the opinion of other medical professionals to back you up is key. You may need a doctor to speak on your behalf about how a faulty treatment affected the outcome of your condition.
Estimate Their Responsibility
If your medical malpractice happened after a previous personal injury, note that the liability falls both on the doctor and on the person who caused your initial injury. Just how much liability falls on each person is somewhat subjective, so speak with your lawyer about how much compensation to pursue. You will likely get a portion of compensation from both parties, since your doctor can't take the full fall for your injury.
Estimate Your Losses
Determining how much you've lost because of your injury and because of your poor medical treatment is also a bit subjective. Aside from the physical costs and the loss of income or daily functioning, there's also a psychological component of loss, since you may experience a lot of emotional stress from an injury that takes a turn for the worse. Getting the appropriate compensation for your injury will require you and your lawyer to evaluate all possible sources of loss.
For a personal injury lawyer, contact a lawyer such as Greg S. Memovich.