It’s devastating to experience an injury or worsened medical outcome at the hands of a doctor or medical facility you trusted with your care—and your life. Unfortunately, doctors sometimes act negligently when treating a patient and fail to uphold their legal duty to meet the medical community’s accepted standard of care.
If you’ve suffered serious harm from medical malpractice in Chicago, you may be wondering what you could recover in a medical malpractice claim and how the process works.
When a medical provider causes you to suffer an injury, a worsened medical outcome, or even a shortened life expectancy, no legal process erases the harm; however, a successful claim demands financial accountability from the negligent provider. While no two cases are the same, a successful case recovers available economic and non-economic damages as described below, depending on your losses.
Medical care is expensive, but when your care makes your condition worse or causes serious harm, it’s even more costly. Recoverable economic damages in medical malpractice claims often include the following:
If the medical malpractice caused hospital wrongful death in Chicago, the family can recover additional compensation, such as funeral costs and the lost income of the provider, through a medical malpractice wrongful death claim filed by the decedent’s representative.
Non-economic damages are intangible and more difficult to assign a monetary amount, but they are often the most devastating aspect of a medical malpractice injury. Common non-economic damages recovered are as follows:
Compensation for emotional trauma may also be available, especially in cases of life-altering injuries or shortened life expectancy resulting from medical malpractice.
In medical malpractice wrongful death cases, the family could recover compensation for their grief, anguish, and loss of a family member’s companionship, love, and support.
Injury victims in medical malpractice cases generally have up to two years from the date the malpractice occurred to file a claim before the state’s statute of limitations expires. The state may extend this date only under specific circumstances, such as the discovery rule.
Under this rule, the statute of limitations begins on the date the victim discovered the malpractice rather than when it occurred. For example, if a patient learns a year after surgery that their abdominal pain is due to surgical gauze left inside a body cavity, the time clock begins on the date of the discovery, with a maximum cutoff date of four years after the occurrence.
It takes experience, knowledge, and access to key resources, such as medical expert witnesses, to recover the full compensation available to you in a medical malpractice lawsuit. Your claim must be supported by compelling evidence that the negligent medical provider failed to meet the medical community’s accepted standard of care, which is a breach of their legal duty to you as a patient. Call or contact Smith LaCien LLP online to learn more about your legal right to compensation and how we can help.
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