It can be really frustrating when the Plymouth medical malpractice attorney you contacted about your medical malpractice claim decides not to take your case. There are several reasons why attorneys turn down medical malpractice cases but we will look at the three most common ones.
Causation is lacking
Let’s say you can prove that your doctor did not properly take care of you or failed to diagnose your condition early enough, can you prove that their lack of proper care is what actually caused the bad outcome?
Take for example a woman in her late 60s who goes to see her doctor complaining of stomach pain and a growing lump in her abdomen. The doctor dismisses her claims and insists that these are just signs that she is growing old and there’s nothing to be worried about.
A few months later, she returns to the same hospital but this time another doctor sees her because the one she saw last time wasn’t there. This doctor listens to her concerns and immediately orders a scan. The results comes back and they show that she has a severe form of abdominal cancer and she only has a few more months to live.
Of course, the first doctor in this case provided the woman with terrible care but can she prove that the doctor’s actions could have prevented the cancer from spreading or would have changed the outcome? Your Plymouth medical malpractice lawyer may have reached out to experts to find out if bad care is what led to your current medical situation.
Sometimes you might receive bad care from your doctor and a bad outcome results but there is no legal claim to pursue your case. Depending on the complexity of the medical issue involved, your attorney might need to conduct significant investigations for them to discover that causation cannot be proven.
Your Bad Outcome Wasn’t the Result of Bad Medical Care
Medicine doesn’t always guarantee 100% that everything will turn out okay. A doctor might consider choosing one treatment from a variety of options that fall within accepted standards of medical practice. The fact that the option he chose for you didn’t work or a problem occurred, doesn’t mean that malpractice occurred even if a different choice would have produced better results.
Sometimes we might think that what appears to be a bad medical decision is actually a decision that is within the standards of medical care.
For example, a patient might develop a complication while admitted at the hospital for some other problem. The doctors do all they can to alleviate the complication by giving certain medications but they do not work. In order to save the patient’s life, the doctors must perform minor surgery but during the procedure, the patient bleeds to death because of all the medicine he was given before.
The outcome is less than desirable but it is not malpractice. The doctors had to treat the complication because it was life threatening. Had the doctor’s not done anything then that would have been malpractice.
Many Plymouth medical malpractice attorneys will turn down a case because the medical decisions made were not unreasonable even though they did not produce a good result. So they cannot prove that the standards of care were violated.
Estimated Cost of Litigation is Less than or Equal to Damages
Medical malpractice cases are expensive, time consuming and difficult. Most malpractice attorneys in Plymouth and anywhere else work on a contingency fee basis. They are only paid when their clients are paid. They will deduct their attorney fees and other expenses from the amount the plaintiff will receive in damages.
Most attorneys also have an idea how much a case is worth and if they see that it’s less than or equal to their fees and other costs, they might not take the case.
We recently wrote a post about what you should expect in your attorney’s bill.
Conclusion
As mentioned earlier, there are several reasons why your Plymouth medical malpractice lawyer turned down your case but that doesn’t mean that if one attorney turns down your case, you shouldn’t seek a second opinion. Attorneys, just like any other professional, have differing opinions about things.
You can get a free consultation at Kevin P Landry Law Offices in Plymouth with one of our medical malpractice attorneys in Plymouth. We will advise you of your rights and protect them as well. Visit our offices today or call us at 508-746-2700.
