You will understand this discourse better through this scenario: You have an orthopedic specialist treating you for continuous knee swelling over the years. You receive monthly injections to curtail the swelling and ease your pain.
However, one of the injections suddenly caused a reaction, making your knee ache severely for the past year. Despite your admiration for the physician, you are angry at the damage to your knee. The damage seems permanent, and you and your family want to explore available legal options.
However, you do not know if you should consider a malpractice or personal injury lawsuit. We will shed light on this issue shortly.
The Appropriate Legal Course of Action
“If someone’s carelessness causes you an injury, you may file a personal injury case in court. However, medical malpractice is a personal injury issue where a medical expert is careless and injures a patient while treating them,’ states attorney David Benowitz of Price Benowitz LLP.
Thus, if a nurse drives through a red light and runs into you, you can file a personal injury case against them. But if the same medical professional prescribes the wrong medication to you, which injures you, you can file a medical malpractice case against them.
In a medical malpractice matter, the plaintiff must prove that the medical expert failed to offer reasonable medical care, which led to avoidable harm. On the other hand, personal injury issues arise from claims that someone allegedly injures another person through intentional or reckless acts. Such injuries may emanate from slips and falls, pedestrian accidents, defective products, and car accidents.
Some states have fixed $300,000 as the financial remedy against medical practitioners in a malpractice case. This fixed fee has discouraged many firms from pursuing medical malpractice cases because they feel they will not get enough at the end of the process. They need to engage expert witnesses and incur other expenses to successfully prove their case which might have taken a better part of the capped fee.
Ohio Has a Better Deal
The cap is higher in Ohio, and a plaintiff can also earn a better reward. The cap on medical malpractice matters in the state ranges from $250,000 to $500,000, depending on the peculiarities of one’s case.
It is essential to add that the cap only applies to “non-economic damages” like loss of enjoyment of life, disfigurement, and pain and suffering. “Economic damages” do not have any cap, which means you can negotiate as you please.
Medical malpractice issues are expensive and highly complex. They demand consultations with experts nationwide to stand a chance of winning. Before experienced lawyers can decide to take on a medical malpractice case, they must have discovered enough economic damages to recover money for the client rather than encouraging the client to waste as many funds on non-economic damages as they will eventually recover.
Victims who are homemakers or retired usually sustain non-economic injuries. Therefore, attorneys are unable to recover enough compensation for them.
The Effect of Recent Laws
Many believe the US is now an exceedingly litigious country for medical-related lawsuits. The reality is different in Ohio, though. The Ohio Department of Insurance data reveals that malpractice claims have taken a downward trend since 2018.
Unfortunately, this downward trend is not because Ohio medical practitioners are causing fewer injuries but the intentional denial of victims’ rights by the Ohio lawmakers and judiciary. That cannot be disassociated from the lobbying effort of different powerful bodies like insurance firms and medical associations.
For instance, an attorney cannot file a medical malpractice case without an “affidavit of merit” from an expert physician attesting that there was negligent care. This new requirement has dissuaded many people from filing and prosecuting malpractice cases.
About the Author/s
The New Jersey Digest is a new jersey magazine that has chronicled daily life in the Garden State for over 10 years.
