Serious medical mistakes call for serious legal action

As we discussed in our last blog post, not all negligence is equal. Sometimes a medical provider’s actions (or inactions) amount to gross negligence. Not only is this likely to result in serious consequences for Ann Arbor victims, but gross negligence may also change the way evidence is handled in a medical malpractice lawsuit.

Take the example of a wrong-site surgery. In other words, you went into the hospital suffering from appendicitis, and the hospital removed your gall bladder, or maybe a kidney. Or perhaps they performed the correct procedure, but forgot to remove a surgical implement from your body afterwards. Maybe you underwent a major surgery with a lengthy recovery, incurring significant medical expenses, only to find that your condition had been misdiagnosed in the first place.

Errors like these don’t require expert testimony to explain to a jury. Many medical malpractice cases do require such testimony — cases where negligence or medical malpractice is not black-and-white, or where medical records gloss over the provider’s negligence (likely because they were written by the provider him or herself). But gross negligence means that any lay person can see that damaging mistakes made.

That, however, does not automatically mean the victim will receive compensation, or that the compensation will be sufficient to cover all of his or her losses. Michigan medical malpractice law includes a number of provisions that can still hinder a victim’s case, including caps on award amounts. A legal professional from Goethel Englehardt PLLC can help formulate a strong case and protect a victim’s rights to full compensation all the way through to the award or settlement phase.