Were you or a loved one seriously injured by a medical professional? Read this article that gives you 3 Texas medical malpractice case tips.
Do I Have A Medical Malpractice Case?
Many clients ask me if it’s bad if they didn’t go to a follow up with their doctor or do everything the doctor told them to do. They worry that it bars them from having a case. Just like anything else in life, you need to examine what reasonable behavior would be. If your doctor told you to do something and didn’t make it seem like it was of utmost importance that you do it, maybe that’s why you didn’t follow through. You might still have a case even if you didn’t follow all of your doctor’s advice. Let’s see what the doctor did or didn’t do. Let’s see what consequences the doctor should have warned you about. Let’s make sure that you were making fully informed decisions based on what the doctors told you.
Medical Malpractice Settlement Timeline
Texas medical malpractice laws are not on your side. They’re on the doctors’ side, the hospitals’ side, and the corporations that run hospitals. One thing people always ask me is about how long their case is going to take. In Texas, if you’ve suffered from medical malpractice, your case is going to take a while.
You need a report written by an expert who can say you have a valid case. Not that you’re going to win, but this is a valid case. You have to file that when you file your lawsuit because you’ve only got 120 days to do that. Then what happens is a judge looks at that report. They read it. They read everything about your case. Then they have to make a determination. Is this meritorious? Does it deserve to go forward? If that judge says yes, the insurance companies for the doctors appeal that decision. In Texas, it’s one of the very limited exceptions that allows them to appeal and freeze your case before you’ve ever done anything. That appeal’s going to take 18 months to two years.
Why do they do that? Because they want to discourage you. They want you to walk away. They want you to suffer more. You need an experienced medical malpractice lawyer. Someone who not only understands the expert report requirements, and all of the administrative needs of a malpractice case, but someone who’s handled appeals and has fought those battles. After the appeals are over, and you know you’ve got a meritorious case, the appellate court says yes, that first judge was right. Your appeal is denied. Then you move forward. Then you move forward aggressively and fast with an experienced medical malpractice lawyer.
Medical Malpractice Claims
People always want to know how do they know if they have a medical malpractice case. In Texas, that’s a complicated question. The only way to know is to get all of your medical records, and get those reviewed by an experienced lawyer; a lawyer who has the resources to hire a doctor in that field of medicine to review all of your records and make a determination what was done wrong. I don’t want to oversimplify it, but basically, we have what’s called a standard of care. What that means is, that doctor has to do things the way a reasonable doctor or hospital should have done it. In Texas, what does that mean? If your doctor makes a judgment call, and some doctors would have made that same judgment call, and it’s supported in the medical literature, there might not be a case. You have to prove that that doctor did something no reasonable doctor would have done. The only way to know that is with an experienced medical malpractice lawyer.
Were you or a loved one injured by the hands of a medical professional and have questions about these 3 Texas medical malpractice case tips? Contact a San Antonio medical malpractice lawyer at Rush & Gransee today for a free confidential consultation and case evaluation. Let our experience work for you.
Like Us on Facebook.