Category: Legal Knowledge

The basic principle of conducting lawsuits related to medical negligence lies in an approach to doctors activity investigation, which reduces the demand to just ‘know what you’re doing’. Lack of professional management of a claim for medical negligence can lead to undesirable results – a complete rejection, or only partial coverage of the damage. Lack of understanding of the description and documentation of the medical case, a wrong choice of a specialist doctor for medical examination, lack of proper instructions from the doctor, and even a recommendation from a lawyer to file a lawsuit that has no chance of being satisfied – all these factors can nullify your efforts. So let us share the insights we get from medical negligence solicitors experts we are getting in touch with on a regular basis.

To take a doctor in the act is not the best option

In the conduct of medical negligence cases, it is important to understand that the task of the lawyer is not ‘catch’ the doctors on their oversight to justify the requested compensation. Doctors have to take complex and urgent decisions, and they can not be sure they are 100% right. So sometimes they make mistakes, like the rest of people every day, but sometimes these mistakes are the result of medical negligence. In this case, the patient has the right to get a compensation for physical and moral damage. Continue reading “This is how medical negligence solicitors work”

Res ipsa loquitur doctrine is hard to base the arguments on in the court, and according to the polls among medical negligence solicitors, only 19% consider that using the doctrine is a reasonable in medical negligence practice. Nevertheless, there are cases when the plaintiff inflicted such damage that shows undeniable malpractice. In the case against the Voice of Cambridge Area Health Authority a patient suffered a brain injury due to the fact that he had a heart attack when he was under general anesthesia. The Court concluded that this was not supposed to happen under the described circumstances, and that therefore the accused had to provide an explanation of what happened that would prove the absence of criminal negligence in his actions.

The Canadian case of McDonald v. York County Hospital gives us the following example. In this case, the plaintiff was taken to hospital for treatment of ankle fracture and he went out of the hospital with an amputated leg. All the prerequisites of res ipsa loquitur doctrine were there: usually in such circumstances the patient does not lose his leg until clinical negligence takes place. The plaintiff could not explain what had happened and the accused could not explain it and the plaintiff have a doctor whose criminal negligence led to this injury. Continue reading “When ‘res ipsa loquitur’ works: real cases overview”

State regulation of medical practice was outlined in Rome. The provisions of the Roman law, the boundary between the reckless and deliberate actions of doctors gradually began to be reflected in the criminal laws of the countries of Western Europe. In the Middle Ages period, the Catholic Church has detained the development of medicine and law, the liability for the failure of healing solved, first of all, from the standpoint of violation of theological dogmas. Institute of mistakes over the years is deeply studied by experts in the field of criminal law. Standards of error contained in the criminal law of certain foreign countries, such as Argentina, Spain, Poland, the USA, France and etc.

Differentiation of intent and error are gradually reflected in the laws of all European countries, although the question of their liability was solved differently. In Germany and Austria the responsibility of the doctor for his professional shortcomings is viewed from the perspective of the private relationship between the doctor and the patient. Criminal liability for the mistakes of doctors is almost completely absent, but they face many civil lawsuits. Establishing a causal link between the fault of the doctor and the harm is the plaintiff’s prerogative. If the patient is, to some degree, is capable of finding guilt of unsatisfactory outcome of treatment, the physician’s responsibility is excluded. Current legislation of foreign countries (Austria, Germany, France) punishes only gross medical error because the relationship between doctor and patient is now recognised as private. Foreign legislation contains special provisions on the criminal liability ‘for improper medical treatment and clumsily, awkwardly carried out operation’ (you may want to get more info paragraphs as 856, 857 of the Criminal Code of Austria).

According to Art. 122-3 of the Criminal Code of France criminal liability is not initiated against the person submitting the evidence that the error made could have been avoided or shouldn’t have been manifested, the doctor was conducting his work in accordance with good practices and hence he is not responsible for the error.

In the UK, clinical negligence area is, perhaps, the most complicated against the background of European countries; this way or the other, either administrative or criminal prosecution can be initiated in such cases. The complexity and a higher demand in services result to an increase of the legal niche: according to Solicitors Guru, a large UK legal aggregator where you can find a solicitor, the number of medical negligence solicitors has risen by 12% in comparison with 2013.

Continue reading “The state of affairs around clinical negligence in well developed economies”

When looking through the archives posted at official UK government website, we have found out plenty of interesting correlations and statistics as for claims and originated proceedings issued in London by nature of proceedings. The statistics we have excavated touch the period starting from the year 2006 to the year 2012. So let us point the trends and tendencies findings we have managed to dig out.

As for the nature of proceedings around land and property industry, the obvious growth trend in the number of proceedings is observed. For example, contract of sale and purchase have jumped from 10 cases in 2006 up to 86 cases in 2012. Both landlord and tenant and mortgages and charges proceedings have experienced a rapid growth in the aforementioned period. The records went up from 3 and 1 cases in 2006, up to 63 and 56 cases in 2012 accordingly. Another interesting fact is that it seems that the nature of proceedings gets more uniform in land and property area: the amount of proceedings classified as ‘other’ have been cut down from 1000+ cases to 190 cases in 2012. Continue reading “Claims and originating proceedings trends in London”