As any Los Angeles personal injury attorney will tell you, a medical malpractice lawsuit is fraught with psychological and financial trauma. Born of the emotions that are always present in a wrongful death incident, the different ways of reacting to the unnecessary loss of a loved one are as varied as there are people on the planet.
But it almost always makes sense to discuss your situation with a Los Angeles medical malpractice attorney when a loved one dies due to negligence in healthcare. It’s not just about money, even though engaging a medical malpractice attorney in Los Angeles may imply that. It often times is about knowing a mistake is less likely to happen in the future, that other lives can be saved.
It also is an expression of a more civilized society. How so? The creation of wrongful death laws comes from a more lawless time, when disagreements were settled via vigilantism. Prior to the establishment wrongful death statutes, a death from reckless behavior, corporate negligence or medical mistakes simply was an unfortunate event. Humans being human, the sense of loss translated into angry feuds and vendettas, sometimes pitting family against family or enterprise to settle scores.
A Los Angeles personal injury attorney could have ended the acrimony between the Hatfields and Mc Coys had they lived today in Laurel Canyon instead of 19th century Appalachia.
The options today are so much better for anyone in the state, including in Los Angeles. Medical malpractice attorneys will vouch for the value of the process, as well as the important steps to follow in the process itself:
Understand your loss.
Wrongful death laws attempt to compensate for the emotional and material losses from medical malpractice. Attorneys in Los Angeles as elsewhere in California generally represent plaintiffs in pursuing compensation for three primary categories of loss:
- Emotions and physical affection – Loss of affection, comfort, companionship, love, moral support, society and solace. In the case of a spouse, loss is also measured in loss of consortium. Emotional pain, suffering and mental anguish of survivors is factored into plaintiff awards.
- Financial support and expenses – Earnings that the deceased would have brought to a household had he or she lived a natural lifespan. This includes regular earnings plus medical insurance and pension or 401K benefits. Expenses include additional medical care and funeral expenses.
- Household services – Value of services performed at household tasks.
Act as soon as possible.
If you suspect medical malpractice was the cause of an injury or death, the California medical malpractice statute of limitations stipulates that you file your case within three years of the incident. That time frame narrows to one year after you, the plaintiff, discover the injury (or, by all reasonable thinking, should have discovered it). For example, if an operation occurred in 2005 where a foreign object was left inside the victim, but that object wasn’t discovered until 2008 with a fatal infection, you had until 2009 to file suit with a Los Angeles medical malpractice attorney.
Know who can file.
Immediate family members are the first to make claims by way of a Los Angeles personal injury attorney, in this order: spouse, children, parents of a deceased child, siblings, children of deceased siblings, grandparents, “lineal descendants” (grandchildren), putative spouse (common law marriage), children of the putative spouse, stepchildren and parents of an adult victim. In some cases an unrelated minor living in the household of the deceased may be eligible for a claim. But anyone filing a claim must be able to prove in court that they were dependent on the deceased at the time of death.
No fees due to your medical malpractice attorney.
In Los Angeles and elsewhere, the only legitimate approach to compensation for a law firm representing medical malpractice survivors is to receive one-third of the award upon winning a case. Upfront fees are almost never requested.
Contact Los Angeles Medical Malpractice Attorneys
If you have sustained an injury due to medical malpractice and are ready to learn how our Los Angeles medical malpractice attorneys can assist you and your family, please call us today for a free consultation about medical malpractice.
David Drexler is an expert trial attorney who will provide you with wise and compassionate legal counsel and representation through each stage of the process. Remember, you pay nothing if we don’t win your case.
You can contact Los Angeles medical malpractice attorney David Drexler by email, by calling 1-877-99-LA-LAW (1-877-995-2529) or by filling out the form below.
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