Professional Negligence aka Malpractice

Hello, this is Attorney Hunter Cavell in Cleveland, Ohio. And today I want to talk about professional negligence, sometimes referred to as malpractice. Now, what is this? This could be medical malpractice. Where there’san injury, it could be dental malpractice. Same idea. It can also be things like legal malpractice, such as if a statute of limitations were blown or some reason that you lost your case other than you were decided against by a jury.

Now, how does this differ between a typical negligence case? Well, professionals, by their nature,are licensed and accredited, so they’re held to a higher standard. Now, part of that is instead of being more likely than not to be liable for something occurring, they are held to what’s called this professional standard of care. So the real question isn’t, did the doctor make a mistake and cause my injury? It’s did the doctor breach this standard of care, and if so, how? And did that cause the injury? Now, in Ohio, you have a very short time to bring these cases. You have one year from the date you knew or should have known about the injury occurring. So that could be at the end of treatment with a doctor at the close of a case for legal malpractice and things like that.

Now, on top of the statute of limitations, there’s something called a statute of repose, which is the total end all, be all time, and that is four years. And what that means is, let’s say you have surgery and something goes wrong, but you don’t find out about it till five years later. Well, even if the doctormade a mistake, you still can’t bring a suit. Now, I personally don’t take medical malpractice cases without another attorney’s help. I don’t take many legal malpractice cases unless I’m co counseling with another client. The reason being is because they are very hard to prove. They are very hard to get an expert. And if you do, you have to find an expert in that field willing to testify against somebody, likely in the same state, and say that another colleague, a peer of theirs, breached the standard of care.

Now, not only is that hard to find someone that way, but you also have to pay them for their professional time. And this can cost six figures. So many attorneys don’t have the firepower or a whole team. And that’s why there are certain law firms that only specialize in this. And many of them get referrals from attorneys such as myself who know and trust these people. Now, I do have a list of referrals for different malpractice actions, and I’m happy to guide someone review a case in point them in the right direction. And if you need some help or you think you may have a professional negligence or a malpractice case and you’re within a year of finding it out, please give me a call at (440) 940-6441. Look at my website, cavelllaw.com, and we’ll figure it out and we’ll refer you to someone who can look at your case a little more thoroughly and spend the time and educate you on it. So thank you and have a good day.