The Personal Injury or Tort Law is defined as the set of laws that “allows an injured person to go to civil court and get a legal remedy (damages) for all losses stemming from an accident or other incident.”
The fundamental purpose of the Tort Law is to ensure that the injured person is financially compensated for the harm they suffered due to a third-party’s carelessness or intentional behavior. This financial compensation is seen as the means of making the individual whole again.
It is vital to note that, although many personal injuries like assault and battery, motor vehicle accidents as a consequence of drunk driving, fraud, and trespass, have equivalent criminal charges. However, civil and criminal law are two different parts of the US Constitution. And, a criminal charge does not automatically trigger a civil case and vice versa.
Torts or personal injuries can be classified into the following two categories:
Intentional torts
Intentional torts are deliberate actions that result in a personal injury include false imprisonment, assault and battery, fraud, the intention infliction of emotional distress, and defamation.
Negligence
Negligence, on the other hand, are mainly caused by accidents like road accidents, wrongful death, and medical malpractice. The salient point here is that the associated incident is not deliberate. It is accidental.
What is medical malpractice?
As stated above, medical malpractice forms part of the Personal Injury Law. It is usually considered to be the negligent actions of a medical professional that causes an injury to a patient.
Moreover, at this juncture, it’s vital to note, that as with any other personal injury claim, the burden of proof is on the plaintiff, not the defendant. In other words, the onus is on the person who intends on filing a legal claim in the civil court to prove that they are the victim of medical malpractice.
Consequently, the plaintiff should hire a medical malpractice attorney from a firm like Dolan Dobrinsky Rosenblum Bluestein, LLP to file a lawsuit on their behalf. The laws surrounding a personal injury claim are complex and need to be interpreted by a legal expert. Otherwise, the plaintiff runs the risk of losing the suit.
The features of a medical malpractice lawsuit
Additionally, the successful lawsuit must have the following characteristics:
The healthcare provider’s actions must be proven to be negligent
It must prove that the injury was caused solely by a medical professional’s negligence. Otherwise, the claim will not be treated as a valid lawsuit. According to the apbla.org website, “it is not sufficient that the healthcare professional simply violated the standard of care.”
In other words, the patient must prove that the injury would not have occurred if the healthcare professional had acted within the absence of negligence.
The cost of the injury is significant
Medical malpractice lawsuits are traditionally extremely costly to litigate. They are very seldom settled out of court and require hours of testimony from many medical experts. An equal number of hours of deposition testimonies before the case even goes to trial.
Thus, it does not make sense to file a medical malpractice lawsuit if the injury is minor and has not resulted in the significant reduction in the victim’s quality of life, as well as the very high costs directly linked to the injury.