Malpractice and Elements to Win a Case
The main goal of each professional, regardless of the field, is to comfort the client or patient in the most way possible. In daily practices, professionals can either willingly or unwillingly fail to meet the standards of the field, thus resulting in provable damages to the client. These errors occur differently depending on the nature of the circumstance facing the expert; some of the malpractices evidenced today include ignorance, negligence, and intentional wrongdoing (Moffitt 2019). This can further result in the expert being hold accountable for the error by the court or any other legal related department risking his or her whole life career. Therefore, it is the responsibility of all professionals to learn the four main elements an individual can use to prove that the malpractice was legal.
Legal malpractice in the ethical community has four main elements, that is, the duty, the breach, the causation, and the harm. The first element and the crucial one to observe to win a case is the duty. As per this element, an agreement is presented first by the plaintiff, and this can be either implied or expressed (Bridgman 2017). Presenting an agreement helps develop a strong relationship between the attorney and the client. The attorney and the client are further required to establish a duty of care once the connection is firmly established (Moffitt 2019). This translates that unless an attorney acts as attorney for a client, then it is illegal to sue the attorney for any malpractice.
The breach is the other crucial essential element that demands attention if an individual is aiming at winning the case against malpractice. Based on the experts’ argument, this element requires the plaintiff to show the omission or the error the attorney had made to reach a breach of duty. In other terms, the mistake or the malpractice is presented (Bridgman 2017). The third fundamental element of legal malpractice is the causation; the part demands that the plaintiff shows the primary causal factor between his or her damage and the attorney’s mistake (Moffitt 2019). As for some cases, the lost case triggers a collectible judgment. Causation element is termed as case within a case mostly as the one is required first to try to handle the underlying cause to establish or prove that the situation would have been a success during the first trial if and only if handled correctly. Following this is then the establishment by the client where he or she is required to approve that it was due to the attorney’s mistake, the win never happened (Moffitt 2019). This element tends to be more complicated compared to the rest.
Damage is the last basic element of legal malpractice, and it requires the plaintiff to sustain the actual damage different from the case of speculative harm or nominal damage. The four core elements of legal malpractice further depend on aspects such as; an intended beneficiary and the statute of limitations (Bridgman 2017). The law of limitation helps to determine the period after which one is required to file the malpractice, either four years from the date of misconduct or one year after the client discovers the error. Therefore, winning a malpractice case depends on the adherence to the four essential elements as well as other related factors that can help win the case.
References
Moffitt, M. (2019). Settlement Malpractice. The University of Chicago Law Review, 86(7), 1825-1900.
Bridgman, Richard D. “Legal Malpractice–A Consideration of the Elements of a Strong Plaintiff’s Case.” SCL Rev. 30 (2017): 213.