Examples of Medical Malpractice Cases
Medical Malpractice Cases Examples
Medical Malpractice Cases Examples
If a doctor or nurse fails to provide proper medical care in the way a responsible medical professional would, it’s known as medical malpractice. There are a large variety of medical malpractice cases, based on the degree of negligence or recklessness, that a patient can claim in a lawsuit.
The physician’s negative actions and breach of their duties must be the direct cause of your injury. If it isn’t, it’s very likely you will have a medical malpractice lawsuit that can prevail.
Recent Medical Malpractice Cases We’ve Won
Here are just a few examples of various medical malpractice cases Morgan & Morgan have been involved in, and the compensation we have won for our clients:
- An obstetrician in Hillsborough County in Florida failed to perform a C-section in a timely manner, resulting in serious injuries to the baby, and the family won a verdict of $38,750,000.
- The failure of a timely diagnosis or treatment of encephalitis resulted in a $28,500,000 verdict with the help of Armando Lauritano, one of Morgan & Morgan’s medical malpractice lawyers in Tampa.
- A 26-week-old premature newborn endured a medication overdose in a hospital in Fort Myers, Florida. The family received a verdict of $19,200,000.
- A delayed diagnosis of a 40-year-old patient’s rectal cancer caused it to spread. This resulted in permanent colostomy and removing part of her liver. The resulting verdict was $9,278,000.
- Our Orlando attorneys helped a family received an $8.6 million settlement after medical professionals in Seminole County, Florida failed to diagnose a 5-year-old girl with tuberculosis meningitis.
- After a claim that a doctor missed and failed to treat a woman’s heart disease that leads to a cardiac arrest and permanent vegetative state, Our attorneys in Daytona Beach secured a $6,330,000 verdict.
- A botched procedure involving a large ethanol injection caused a child’s face and nose to deteriorate, requiring skin from his forehead and ear to repair it. Bryan Smith, a Memphis attorney, used visuals to demonstrate what should have happened and what went wrong, netting the family a $1.97 million verdict.
Our Process
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Documentation
First, your assigned legal team will gather records related to your claim, including medical records, medical bills, and insurance policy information.
These documents will help your attorney understand the extent of your injury, and build your case for compensation.
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Investigation
Your attorney and legal staff will investigate your accident in great detail to gather the necessary evidence.
They may look at dashcam footage, security camera footage, police records, and more to help build your case.
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Negotiation
Your attorney will negotiate with the defense, outside of the courtroom, to help get you the compensation you may be entitled to.
If settlement negotiations are unsuccessful, your attorney is prepared to go to trial and present your case in the strongest possible form.
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FAQs
Examples of Medical Malpractice
Misdiagnosis - A doctor in a hospital fails to recognize cardiac
tamponade in a 63-year-old man and the lack of diagnosis or treatment
leads to his death.
Delayed Diagnosis - A medical professional gives a delayed
diagnosis of a bowel obstruction and the delay causes the patient's
wrongful death.
Childbirth Injuries - An obstetrician fails to perform a C-section
in a timely manner, resulting in serious injuries to the baby.
Medication Errors - Negligence by a physician or nurse causes a
fatal overdose of Vitamin K.
Anesthesia Errors - An anesthesiologist gives the wrong amount of
anesthesia to a patient, resulting in brain damage.
Surgery Errors - A surgeon injures a 37-year-old with a bone saw,
causing permanent scarring and neuropathy.
One of the most common recurring themes in all of these forms of medical malpractice is negligence. Negligence comes in many forms and in many different types of severity, and that level of severity will determine how much you can possibly win in compensation
Negligence
Negligence is defined as the failure to act with the same amount of care
that a reasonable medical professional would have acted within the same
situation. This has to be the direct reason for your injury for it to be
a medical malpractice case.
Here's a clear example of negligence: You bring your son into the
doctor's office to look at a deep laceration he just got while playing
outside with his friends. The doctor calls him into the examination
room, but is distracted and rushed from having so many patients that
day. Unfazed by the depth of the wound, he says it needs just a few
stitches. In doing this, he instinctively takes tools near him from a
table - but unbeknownst to him, these tools had just been used to treat
an infection. In addition, this decision goes against the policy to only
use tools that were sterilized and in drawers.
A few days after this doctor visit, your son feels pain, gets sicker,
and has a clear discoloration around the cut. His laceration is now
infected, requiring hospitalization and extensive treatment. The doctor
denies any and all responsibility for this infection.
This is a clear case of negligence from the description, but it also
relates to the four elements of negligence. These are duty, breach,
injury, and damages.
Duty: With a doctor/patient relationship established, the doctor now
has a responsibility to give that patient reasonable care in their
treatment, which includes following basic, standard guidelines followed
by the community. In this case, the doctor's duty was to perform a
thorough examination of the child's laceration, and treat it the way
other doctors would under similar conditions.
Breach: If reasonable care and standard medical
guidelines are not followed, then the duty has been breached by the
doctor. Here, the doctor's decision to use tools on the table breached
his medical office's protocol, and breached his doctor/patient
relationship by using unsanitized tools to place your son at risk of
infection.
Injury: For the doctor's breach of duty to lead to negligent medical
malpractice, an injury must be sustained by the wronged party. In this
case, your attorney will need to prove that your son's infection was
caused by the unsterilized tools.
Damages: The injury must cause the victim to have suffered damages,
whether they are economic or non-economic. Your son required
hospitalization, and the subsequent medical bills were substantial. You
may have also had to miss time at work to tend to your son.
Gross Negligence
In addition to simple negligence, there is also gross negligence. Gross
negligence takes the idea of negligence a step further - the breach of
duty was much worse in these cases, where the failure to provide
reasonable care goes beyond medical standards and would have been
obvious to anyone.
An example of this would be to imagine that you are someone who needs
immediate surgery after a car accident causes severe trauma to your left
arm. The surgeon, however, in his carelessness, checked your chart
believing you were a different patient, one who needed their right arm
amputated. The right arm gets amputated instead of the left arm
receiving treatment.
These examples are admittedly very clear cut. There is a lot to consider
in a medical malpractice case - just because an injury occurred while
under the care of a medical professional does not mean an individual has
a guaranteed medical malpractice lawsuit on their hands. There are ways
in which many people think they have a medical malpractice suit, but it
turns out to not be the case; it is important to understand your
situation.
Do You Have a Case?
Just because a patient suffers an injury while under the care and
attention of a doctor, it does not automatically mean the individual has
a medical malpractice suit against the healthcare professional.
For example:
Before surgery, patients are given warnings of the risks involved in a
procedure. The patient must understand the risks and authorize the
surgery, meaning that those risk factors would not be grounds for a
medical malpractice case.
If a patient receives instructions after their surgery about what to do for follow-up care, they must follow it. If they fail to follow these instructions, and an injury occurs as a result, they will likely not have a medical malpractice suit.