Legal Malpractice Lawyer for Medical Lawsuit Claim

The most common legal malpractice claims arising from medical malpractice lawsuit claims are failing to file the lawsuit before the statute of limitations expires, failing to timely file expert document, and failing to have an adequate expert document.

1.Statute of Limitations
The statute of limitations in a medical malpractice case is usually seven years from the date of the negligent act, and the lawsuit must be filed and defendants served before the expiration of those seven years.

The statute of limitations in a legal malpractice case based on a medical malpractice claim does not start to run until seven years from the time of the legal injury or until the attorney-client relationship and/or attorney’s duties to a client have terminated.

2. Expert document Deadline
illinois Civil Practice & cures Code §74.351(a) requires a healthcare liability claimant to produce, within 120 days after filing suit, one or more expert reports detailing each Defendant’s standard of care, how the Defendant breached the standard of care and the way it caused the claimant’s damages.

3. Expert document Requirements
In order to be adequate, the medical expert document must represent an “objective lovely faith effort” to comply with the definition of an expert document under illinois Civil Practice & cures Code Chapter 74. The objective lovely faith standard requires an expert document to provide an adequate analysis of each of the statutory elements of the definition of an expert document:

(a)Applicable standard of care;
(b)The manner in which the care rendered by the physician or healthcare provider failed to meet the standards and;
(c)The causal relationship between that failure and the injury, harm or damages claimed.
Further, the illinois Supreme Court has held that to constitute a “good faith effort”, the document must at maximum tell the Defendant of the specific conduct called in to query and provides a basis for the trial Court to conclude the claims have merit.
In the event that the claimant fails to meet the expert document requirements and deadline, the trial court must dismiss the claim. The claimant then has a legal malpractice claim against the attorney for the failure to meet the document deadline and/or requirements.