There is a lot of information to boil down to arrive at an essence stage explaining the legal basis for medical malpractice wrongful death laws. Professional negligence or medical malpractice can include instances where the provision of negligent medical care and treatment causing an injury to a patient and in the case of wrongful death liability, that injury is a death.
Wrongful Death
The estate or family members of an individual that died as a result of the willful, reckless or negligent conduct act of another can hold that person civilly liable for the wrongful death of their loved one. Damages can include loss of financial support and funeral expenses, emotional pain and suffering of family members and loss of consortium. The actions causing the wrongful death may have been intentional or unintentional. An unintentional act resulting in a death might involve negligence or an act of reckless indifference as to whether anyone would be hurt. In a medical setting, a wrongful death might result where a physician provided medical care and treatment that fell below the standard of care acceptable by his peers. This is called professional negligence or medical malpractice. The negligent care and treatment could be the direct or the proximate cause of a patient suffering a preventable death.
Elements of a Medical Malpractice Case
All medical malpractice claims require essentially the same basic elements for actionable causation to exist.
- A duty of care was owed the patient by the physician or healthcare provider
- That duty of care was breached by physician failure to conform to the relevant standard of medical care.
- The breach of the standard of care must be shown by expert testimony, or in the case of obvious errors such as an act involving, “res ipsa loquitur,” the negligent act by the physician speaks for itself without need for expert testimony.
- The breach of duty caused either a direct injury or was the proximate cause of an injury to the patient.
- Damages
Getting Legal Help
If you or a member of your family is considering an action against a healthcare provider based on the medical malpractice wrongful death laws of your particular State it may be helpful to discuss the loss with an experienced medical malpractice lawyer. An attorney can help to sort out the circumstances that caused the loved one’s death and take the legal steps necessary to protect the rights and interests of the bereaved family.
