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Understanding Your Rights to Medical Malpractice Compensation in New York

Medical malpractice can cause numerous expenses, including costly medical care, lost income and non-economic damages like suffering and pain. A licensed New York attorney can help you know your rights to be compensated.

First check if the injuries were caused by an error made by a medical professional. The next step is to make a claim for malpractice.

Medical expenses

The most obvious expense of malpractice is the cost of medical care required to treat the resulting injuries. This type of damages comes with an amount established by law in each state, which is outlined in the liability insurance policy of a healthcare provider. Some states also establish injured patients compensation funds to reduce the perceived cost of litigation, and also to help reduce the cost of liability for health care providers.

Victims are entitled to compensation in addition to medical expenses in the event of negligence being deemed to be a cause. These are referred to as special or economic damages. They include the cost of medical services (past or future) required to treat an injury caused by the negligence as well as any income lost due to being in a position of being unable to work.

The damages for suffering and pain are common in medical malpractice cases. This category of damages is a subjective one and can vary greatly between different plaintiffs. This includes emotional distress, physical pain and other physical consequences of the malpractice. For example, a plaintiff could be compensated for the error of a doctor which caused her to miss an important cancer screening appointment.

In some instances punitive damages can be awarded. These are intended to punish doctors for particularly indecent behavior, such as leaving a dirty sponge in the patient's body after surgery.

Suffering and pain

The pain and malpractice suffering category is a type of non-economic loss in medical malpractice cases. They are a way to compensate for the physical and emotional trauma that a victim suffered due to the medical professional's negligence. The symptoms can be minor, like discomfort or anxiety or more serious issues, like loss of enjoyment in life and depression, embarrassment, fear, and sleep problems.

Since it's difficult to put a dollar value on suffering and pain, jury instructions generally leave it to the jurors. They are able to use their own judgement, background and experience to decide what they believe to be fair and reasonable. This is why the amount of compensation paid in malpractice cases vary greatly.

A medical malpractice lawyer can help you prove your injuries through evidence. Photographs and X-rays as well as home movies, models and diagrams can help a juror understand the extent of your injuries.

If a doctor's negligence led to the death of a victim survivors can seek compensation through the wrongful-death lawsuit or statutes. Wrongful death law allows the spouse and children of the deceased victim to receive the same compensation they would have received had the patient survived. In most cases, however the total amount of damages the victim is allowed to receive is determined by the state's damage limits for pain and suffering. It is important to have a seasoned medical malpractice lawyer on your side in order to pursue the compensation you're entitled to.

Loss of wages

You can recover your lost wages if you are unable to work due to medical malpractice. This amount includes your base pay commissions, bonuses and benefits from employment, pay increases, and retirement fund contributions. Your lawyer will go through your past pay stubs to calculate your earnings per hour before the injury, and then subtract the missed work to arrive at your total lost wages. Your attorney can help you calculate your future loss of income by using a present value calculation. This is an analysis of your finances that analyzes the effects of your injuries in the future on your ability to earn a living. It's typically performed by a professional who is hired by your attorney.

There is also the possibility of recovering non-economic damages, like pain and suffering, caused by the malpractice. The jury will decide the appropriate compensation amount that can differ from case to case. Some states cap these damages. However they have been declared inconstitutional by numerous courts.

Seven-figure settlements usually involve serious permanent injuries or wrongful deaths caused by extreme healthcare negligence. Settlements with high values can be granted for, among others, surgical errors that cause amputations or brain injury to infants and mothers and also anesthesia mistakes that lead to comas. In certain instances the punitive damages might be available to punish the bad behavior.

Damages to future medical treatment

In medical malpractice lawyers cases there are two kinds of damages a plaintiff could pursue: non-economic and economic damages. The first is based on quantifiable losses like the future or past medical expenses. The latter are more difficult to quantify and include the pain and suffering as well as the loss of enjoyment of life. In a lawsuit involving medical negligence the jury will examine expert testimony to determine these kinds of losses.

It is relatively easy to prove medical expenses from the past by submitting actual bills that were sent to the injured person by their health medical providers. For future costs, the lawyer representing the plaintiff will provide medical evidence that proves what treatments are likely to be required in the future and the amount that those treatments cost currently. The amount of future medical care needed can also be affected by the victim's age at the time of the malpractice.

The damages for lost wages in the future can be proven by showing the impact of an injury on the patient's ability to work and earn in the future. This can be proven by expert testimony or by studying similar cases in the past.

Pain and suffering is a wider category of damages that encompasses the physical and emotional pain and suffering suffers a patient from medical malpractice. This type of damage is typically based on testimony of witnesses and victims as well as evidence like photographs of videotapes and written reports.