Important Factors Florida Attorneys Consider When Taking a Medical Malpractice Case

Over the past 50 years, attorney Philip Freidin has taken on some of the most difficult personal injury and medical malpractice cases in the state or Florida. With this extensive experience and expertise, comes a clear and thorough process that is exercised when determining if the firm will take on a particular case. In claims of medical malpractice, which are usually vigorously contested and very expensive, due to the high cost of hiring multiple expert witnesses as required by Florida law among other things, we must be very careful in our case selection.

A successful medical malpractice case requires four things:

1. Liability or fault. Most of our clients focus on this part of the case. They often feel that since something bad happened to them, they should recover damages. But the law requires fault to be proven. That requires an expert of the same specialty (if your cardiologist missed an incipient heart attack, we need a cardiologist; if the nurses failed to report stroke symptoms, we need a nurse expert). By law, we cannot file a claim unless we have an affidavit from an expert in the same specialty saying there was negligence and that it caused the injury.
2. Second, the fault must be medically connected to the injury. In a car accident it’s easy to understand that if another driver runs a red light and almost hits you, or hits you and there’s no damage to you or your car, there’s no case. In a malpractice case we must show that the failure in question caused the injury. So, if the nurse fails to report the stroke symptoms to the Dr., but you have already had the stroke before it could be recognized or treated, there is no connection. We call that lack of causation.
3. The third requirement is that the wrongful medical act be connected to the outcome. For example, if the patient has a stroke but previously had several other strokes, it may be difficult or impossible to prove this last stroke caused your loved one any additional injury.
4. The fourth thing we look at is: who can pay for you damages? If the Doctor has no insurance (and many don’t) or insufficient assets (and most are protected) we can’t generally take that case as there is no remedy for the wrong done to you.

We apply these four criteria to every in-take decision we make. We do so carefully, with full respect for the interests of our prospective clients. But indeed, it is easier said than done. Nevertheless, our team at Freidin Brown tries its best to do that every day. Each case is looked at by at least two lawyers and our highly trained paralegal. Most cases, even the ones we turn down, are run by medical or nursing experts in the field of inquiry.

We love our work and feel we do everything we can to protect your interests.