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Essential Elements in Healthcare Negligence Claims
Winning medical malpractice cases under Florida Statutes § 766.102 requires establishing four distinct legal elements that separate valid claims from unfortunate medical outcomes. Our attorneys for medical negligence work with physicians across multiple specialties who review hospital records and provide testimony that convinces juries the care you received fell dangerously below acceptable standards.
Duty of Care: Establishing the Provider-Patient Relationship
A duty of care exists when a healthcare provider agrees to treat you, creating a legal obligation to act competently, established when a doctor accepts you as a patient or when treatment begins.
Breach of Standard: Proving the Provider Failed You
A breach occurs when the provider fails to meet the standard of care a competent provider would have given, proven by expert testimony about what should have been done and how the provider's actions fell short.
Causation: Connecting Negligence to Your Injuries
Proving causation shows that the provider’s breach directly caused your injuries, not from the condition or complications, with medical experts analyzing records to link negligence to your harm.
Damages: Documenting Your Actual Harm
You must prove quantifiable damages, including extra medical bills, lost wages, and pain, using records, expert testimony, and evidence of how the injury affected your life to establish compensation.
Medical malpractice requires thorough investigation and expert testimony to explain complex medical concepts. Dr. Timothy Brooks, M.D., our in-house physician, offers critical insight during case evaluation and helps us prove key elements when the insurance company denies wrongdoing
Types of Negligent Care Our Law Firm Fights Against
Our lawyers for medical negligence have recovered compensation for victims across a broad range of preventable healthcare errors:
- Diagnostic errors:Failure to diagnose cancer, heart disease, stroke, or infections in time for effective treatment, or misdiagnosis leading to harmful and inappropriate care that allows conditions to progress unchecked.
- Surgical negligence:Wrong-site surgery, retained surgical instruments left inside patients, anesthesia mistakes causing brain damage, or post-operative infections from improper sterilization that require additional surgeries.
- Birth injuries:Oxygen deprivation during delivery causing cerebral palsy, improper use of forceps causing permanent brain damage, failure to perform emergency cesarean sections, or medication errors harming mother or baby.
- Medication mistakes:Wrong prescriptions, incorrect dosage calculations, failure to identify dangerous drug interactions, or pharmacy dispensing errors causing organ damage or death.
- Emergency room failures:Improper triage of critical patients, delayed treatment of heart attacks or strokes where minutes matter, or premature discharge of patients with life-threatening symptoms.
- Hospital infections:MRSA, sepsis, or other preventable hospital-acquired infections resulting from unsanitary conditions or failure to follow basic infection control protocols.
Our Record of Success in Medical Malpractice Litigation
A jury awarded a Mossy Head man $160,000 in damages Thursday after finding a White-Wilson Medical Center surgeon negligent in his duties.
Six Bay County jurors awarded almost half a million dollars Thursday to a local woman who said she lost the use of her right eye after cataract surgery.
The Escambia Circuit Court jury found Dr. Lornetta Epps, a gynecologist, negligent in her care of Amber Nail, who was 14 at the time of the 1993 surgery. The same five-woman, one-man panel exonerated Dr. James Boyd, a surgeon who repaired a complication.
What Families Can Recover in Medical Malpractice Cases
Victims of medical negligence deserve compensation that addresses both immediate and long-term consequences:
- Medical expensesfor corrective surgeries, rehabilitation, medications, and ongoing treatment.
- Future medical costswhen injuries require lifelong care or monitoring.
- Lost wagesfrom inability to work during recovery.
- Lost earning capacitywhen permanent disabilities end careers.
- Physical pain and sufferingfrom both the negligence and the necessary corrective procedures.
- Emotional distres, including depression, anxiety, and trauma.
In wrongful death cases under Florida Statutes § 768.21, families pursue compensation for funeral expenses, lost financial support, loss of companionship, and the emotional devastation of losing a loved one to preventable medical errors. Cases involving gross negligence may warrant punitive damages that punish particularly reckless conduct.
