Med Mal May Be Tricky

Medical malpractice is most often considered to be a lawsuit filed against a doctor for some form of negligence that caused a patient harm. In reality, there are numerous kinds of malpractice lawsuits.

These days when people read about medical malpractice in the media, they assume that the story will be about a doctor doing something negligently that severely injured or caused the death of someone. Not many people realize that malpractice law includes not only medical malpractice, but legal, dental, accounting, real estate and other types of malpractice.

The difficulty here is in knowing if a professional did act negligently. While it’s true that trying to pinpoint negligence when dealing with a doctor or lawyer, etc., is like trying to capture the wind at times, there are some signs and red flags that will indicate something is amiss.

Attorneys are required to live up to certain ethical standards, as they are in a position of great authority. People trust their legal counsel to provide the best advice for them. When legal advice is knowingly given that is not in the best interests of the client, there may be grounds for a malpractice lawsuit.
The sticking point here is proving the “poor” advice was given with the knowledge that it would be detrimental to the client. What is required to file a legal malpractice lawsuit is a verified attorney/client relationship and that the information given to the client had a direct adverse effect on that client and that the act of giving that poor advice was foreseeable as causing harm.

For doctors and dentists, the standard of care they should offer patients is of the very highest. After all, they are supposed to do no harm and act in a patient’s best interests. Mistakes covered up or not admitted to despite being fairly obvious, may be grounds to ask for damages for injuries suffered as a result of the mistakes.

The law dealing with this area of malpractice varies from state to state when it comes to the criteria to be met to file a lawsuit. To find out what is applicable in each state, contact an experienced medical malpractice attorney. In some instances it may also be necessary to find out how the state defines medical malpractice.
The bottom line in all malpractice suits is that the professionals handing out advice have trained for years to become what they are today. They are not supposed to make mistakes that harm or hurt others. Unfortunately however, professionals are human, and humans do make mistakes no matter how well they are trained.

Professional ethics aside, if a situation has occurred that caused injuries, death, legal or financial harm to befall an individual; they need to seek the advice of a malpractice attorney with a solid reputation for handling cases like this. Find out what rights the plaintiff has and then pursue them to obtain justice.

To learn more about Atlanta personal injury lawyer, Stephen M. Ozcomert or Atlanta personal injury, Atlanta personal injury lawyer, Atlanta personal injury attorney, visit Ozcomert.com.

Claim It, It's Your Right

Many people choose not to pursue an accident claim. The reasons range from knowing the insurance company will settle; to they don't want the legal hassles and expense.

The bottom line is that putting in a claim for compensation for personal injuries after an accident is pretty much an accepted right in the U.S. "While it may take some work to get the compensation for damages, it may well be worth it in the long-term, particularly if serious injuries have been sustained and a person's life has been significantly altered because of it," commented Stephen Ozcomert, an Atlanta personal injury attorney.

"Keep in mind that even though an insurance company may settle on a claim without anyone having to do too much to get it done, the settlement is generally much lower than it could be if the case were taken to court," explained Ozcomert. This is why most lawyers will advise their clients not to take the first settlement offer that comes along. Insurance companies want to accomplish one thing, closing the case and spending as little as they can to accomplish it.

Most accident claims do require some work to obtain compensation, but if the injuries are serious enough, the work will be well worth it. The first thing an attorney will need to do is be able to prove that the other person in the accident was the party "at fault." Use a cell phone at the scene of the accident, if need be, to get clear pictures of the damage. They may come in handy in court.

Remember to get all the information needed from any eyewitnesses, report the accident to the police, and also get a copy of the accident report. Don't assume there are no serious injuries, as many of them may be silent and not manifest themselves until a later time with drastic consequences. If an ambulance is needed, call one immediately and then contact an Atlanta personal injury attorney.

While the accident may have been partially the fault of both drivers involved, the party laying the claim for compensation may still claim and receive some damages. "The proportion or percentage of negligence in cases where both drivers are at fault is usually determined by the courts using the doctrine of contributory negligence. That may mean compensation won't be 100%, but instead a proportion thereof," explained Stephen Ozcomert, an Atlanta personal injury attorney.

There a great many other details that go into mounting a personal injury claim, so ensure the lawyer hired is big on aggressive representation for their clients to obtain justice.

To learn more about Atlanta personal injury lawyer, Stephen M. Ozcomert or Atlanta personal injury, Atlanta personal injury lawyer, Atlanta personal injury attorney, visit Ozcomert.com.

Malpractice Versus Negligence

Malpractice means so many different things to different people, that the term when used in a legal setting really needs to be expanded upon for the sake of clarity.

The most crucial thing is to be able to distinguish between malpractice and other kinds of negligence. "Generally speaking the term malpractice refers to a set of circumstances when a professional (doctor, lawyer, dentist, accountant, etc.) fails to use the proper level of skill, diligence or care to perform their professional services. In failing to perform properly, this causes harm to patients or customers," said Stephen Ozcomert, an Atlanta personal injury lawyer.

In general, a professional may be sued if s/he fails to perform their "professional" duties using the accepted standard of care, level of learning and skill one should reasonably expect from a person in their particular position. "Or to put this in simpler terms, the professional's performance is held up in comparison to the performance standards of other professionals in the same field. So, if the level of performance is of a lesser standard than others, that person may be accused of malpractice," added Ozcomert, who practices Atlanta personal injury law.

What a patient or customer needs to do to prove malpractice is show that they suffered an injury, damages or a loss because the person didn't do their job properly. Malpractice charges may be laid against those practicing in a profession that is licensed or regulated by the state, which would include lawyers, surgeons, dentists and accountants. "There are other categories of professionals that cannot be held liable for malpractice, but may be held accountable for negligence," outlined Ozcomert.

If someone feels they have been a victim of either malpractice or negligence, contact a highly qualified malpractice attorney and discuss the details of the case. "The lawyer will know the rules and regulations that need to be followed to file a proper malpractice lawsuit against another professional, even if it does happen to be another attorney," commented Stephen Ozcomert, an Atlanta personal injury lawyer.

To learn more about Atlanta personal injury lawyer, Stephen M. Ozcomert or Atlanta personal injury, Atlanta personal injury lawyer, Atlanta personal injury attorney, visit Ozcomert.com.

Medical Errors May Cost Lives

Every year there are more deaths across America chalked up to medical errors. This is when a health care professional doesn't offer the patient quality care, and injuries or death may result.

Medical malpractice/medical errors don't just happen in the hospital, although this is the association that many people have when they think about this term. In addition, it's not just physicians that may make the errors. Those who may make an error in medical management include surgeons, dentists, nurses, hospital workers, eye doctors and general practitioners.

If you have questions about the statistics, then make it a point to check out the Journal of the American Medical Association. One of their most notable articles indicates that roughly 12,000 deaths happen yearly thanks to unnecessary surgery. Close to 7,000 fatalities were the result of medication errors in hospital and nearly 20,000 deaths were the end result of other errors in a hospital setting. The dollar amount that goes along with these errors is astronomical.

You may be wondering what kinds of errors happen in a hospital setting besides medication errors, which typically leads the list of mistakes. In fact, a recent study done by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies shows that at least 1.5 million people a year are harmed as a result of errors in medication.

There are actually a large number of things that may go wrong in a hospital, including surgical errors, medical experimentation, anesthesia errors, birth errors, misdiagnosis or delayed diagnosis, wrongful death, and failing to take the correct medical action deemed appropriate. This is just the tip of the medical error iceberg too.

If you've been the victim of a medical error, you may stand to lose your job, lose wages, perhaps suffer a permanent disability which may affect the quality of your life, loss of future income, ever increasing medical bills, chronic pain and much more. These are also some of the things you may be able to seek compensation for when you speak to a qualified medical malpractice lawyer.

An experienced med mal attorney will strive to ensure you recover appropriate compensation for the various losses we have discussed in this article.

Tim Anderson works with Atlanta Personal Injury attorney, Stephen M. Ozcomert. The firm specializes in personal injury, malpractice, motorcycle accidents, and wrongful death. To learn more about Atlanta personal injury lawyer, Stephen M. Ozcomert or Atlanta personal injury, Atlanta personal injury lawyer, Atlanta personal injury attorney, visit Ozcomert.com.

Whoops – that Fall Hurt

Premises liability law has been around for a lot of years, but still, many people don't really understand what it means.

To put this simply, premises liability is all about someone falling and injuring themselves due to the carelessness or negligence of a business or property owner. If this happens, the victim has a right to pursue compensation for those injuries.

Typically, the person who owns a business or operates it, is liable for dangerous conditions that they know about and either don't deal with them, and/or don't warn people about the potentially dangerous situation. The other side of the coin is that they "should" have known about the dangerous condition by regularly inspecting the property.

There is such a big emphasis on knowledge because it is critical to the imposition of liability. So in the above example, the notice a landowner/business gets may be constructive or actual. For instance, if the owner of the property is the one who creates the dangerous situation, they are deemed to have actual notice of it, because they created it.

On the other hand, if the owner/operator or the workers don't create a dangerous situation, they may still be liable for constructive notice of the danger. This means that the bad situation was there for such a long time they should have seen it or done something about it by doing regular inspections.

Let's use the example of someone spilling hot coffee on a floor and it is not cleaned up. The actual proof of how long that spill has been there lies in the condition of the spill. If it's partially dry or has footprints tracking through it, it's obviously been there for some time, and therefore, the owner/manager should have known and done something about it. This is a good example of constructive notice.

Of interest, is that the most common mistake a business owner makes is in not warning people that come to his or her property that there may be an unavoidable danger. Some businesses, just because of the nature of what they do, are considered to be inherently dangerous.

Those businesses need to have the premises posted with warnings. If the venture is something like a swimming pool and they have a wet deck all the time and warn people about it, then they are not necessarily required to fix the situation (difficult to do if it's a pool deck).

There are many other rules and exceptions when dealing with premises liability law, including third-party liability, so it's best to speak to an attorney who is intimately familiar with the ropes. They will help you build a solid case.

Tim Anderson works with Atlanta Personal Injury attorney, Stephen M. Ozcomert. The firm specializes in personal injury, malpractice, motorcycle accidents, and wrongful death. To learn more about Atlanta personal injury lawyer, Stephen M. Ozcomert or Atlanta personal injury, Atlanta personal injury lawyer, Atlanta personal injury attorney, visit Ozcomert.com.

Are Your Premises Safe?

If you have dangerous or hazardous conditions on your property, it would be wise to know the ins and outs of premises liability before someone injures themselves.

Basically the law of premises liability is a branch of personal injury law that covers injuries sustained as a result of dangerous or hazardous conditions on a piece of property. The major premise here is that a person who owns property – homeowner or commercial property – is (to a certain extent) responsible for what happens on that property. This means the owner is obligated to make sure the property and/or any buildings on that land are in safe condition for others.

The other name for cases in this area of law -- perhaps you don’t recognize the term premises liability -- is slip and fall cases. The bulk of cases in this area usually do deal with falls on slippery surfaces, trips over various hazards and other things, such as stairs in poor repair. It shouldn't come as much of a surprise that this area of law is connected to several others as well.

Other injuries that may be covered by the doctrine of premises liability are porches collapsing, lead poisoning, mercury contamination, elevator malfunctions or drops, stairs that collapse and property fires. No two premises liability cases are alike and each one must be considered on its own merits. However having said that, there is one common element in most of these cases, and that would be negligence. The courts need to know if a property owner or manager is liable for a plaintiff's injuries.

Proving responsibility for someone else's injuries requires three components or elements. The first is a showing of duty, meaning that the owner did know or should have reasonably known about a hazard on his or her property. The second element refers to a breach of duty, in that it must be proven that the property owner failed to act "as a reasonable person" to remove or fix the danger.

Element three is that the plaintiff must show a causal link. In other words, prove that the defendant did not follow a reasonable standard of care and that this failure was the "direct and proximate cause" of the plaintiff being injured. If you have had an accident on someone's property and want to know your legal rights, contact a premises liability attorney to discuss your situation.

Tim Anderson works with Atlanta Personal Injury attorney, Stephen M. Ozcomert. The firm specializes in personal injury, malpractice, motorcycle accidents, and wrongful death. To learn more about Atlanta personal injury lawyer, Stephen M. Ozcomert or Atlanta personal injury, Atlanta personal injury lawyer, Atlanta personal injury attorney, visit Ozcomert.com.

Surgical Malpractice

Having an operation ranks as number one on a list of things people would rather not do. There is an enormous amount of trust placed in the hands of a surgeon, and one hopes there are no surgical errors.

It's tough enough to get up the courage to face major surgery without also having to worry if the surgeon is in top form and able to do the job. Unfortunately however, surgical medical malpractice results in approximately 98,000 deaths a year. These statistics, courtesy of the Institute of Medicine, further suggest that total does not include patients who have wound up with life altering injuries due to surgery.

What is surgical medical malpractice? Most commonly it is the result of a surgeon failing to give their patient proper care, and that failure ends up causing serious injuries or death. Typically, this would have to do with a surgeon not adhering to accepted medical standards or not properly utilizing their skills.

Sadly, surgical medical malpractice is often due to very simple errors that should not have occurred had the surgeon been paying close attention to the surgical field, things such as using improperly sterilized instruments, a wrong incision, the puncture wound or a cut to an organ, anesthesia errors, surgery on the wrong organ or side, and instruments left inside a patient on closing.

Errors during surgery are one thing, negligence in diagnosing the right kind of operation necessary is another, and that is also classified as surgical medical malpractice. The three most often encountered classifications of surgery are emergency, urgent and elective. In the case of emergency surgery, it needs to be done post haste, not delayed. Urgent surgery needs to be done within a two-hour time frame, and elective surgery may be put off for some time.

Many procedures are prone to surgical malpractice, some more so than others. The ones that seem to be the most susceptible to errors are operations involving thoracic surgery, cosmetic surgery, gastric bypass, cardiothoracic and child delivery. While it is true that surgical medical malpractice is a reality of life, this isn't to say that the majority of surgeries don't go precisely as planned, and were deemed a success.

If you suspect you have been a victim of surgical malpractice, contact a medical malpractice attorney and find out what your rights are in this situation. Your attorney will be able to advise you of how cases such as this are handled.

Tim Anderson works with Atlanta Personal Injury attorney, Stephen M. Ozcomert. The firm specializes in personal injury, malpractice, motorcycle accidents, and wrongful death. To learn more about Atlanta personal injury lawyer, Stephen M. Ozcomert or Atlanta personal injury, Atlanta personal injury lawyer, Atlanta personal injury attorney, visit Ozcomert.com.