What is a Tort?
Tort comes from the French word for “wrong,” and refers to “wrongs” committed against other people by their fellow man. In other words, torts refers to personal injuries caused, either intentionally or unintentionally, by the negligence of another. As just pointed out, a tort can also be an intentional act. Auto accidents comprise only one small area of tort law.
Hoffman Law represents clients in most tort-related areas. Some of these areas include work-place injuries (workers’ compensation claims), medical malpractice, slip-and-fall cases, auto accidents, and product liability cases. If you’ve been injured, by the negligence of another, in some way other than an auto accident or product liability, we would be happy to discuss your case. As always, your initial consultation is absolutely free of charge. Call us today!
Medical Malpractice
We all go to doctors to get help, when we need it most. Most medical doctors, nurses, and other medical staff carry out their duties with dilligence and care. However, when those who have pledged to help us fail to exercise an appropriate level of care, it can lead to serious injury or even death. Thankfully, the medical establishment in the state of Massachusetts, including the hospitals, doctors, nurses and other medical personnel, are among the best in the country. Nevertheless, even these professionals can and do make mistakes.
If you’ve been injured through the carelessness of someone in the medical industry, your legal rights are no different than anywhere else in our society. In other words, negligence is negligence, and you have a legal right to recover for your losses. The fact that a doctor may have been well intentioned is irrelevant to your legal right of recovery.
From a legal standpoint, the question that must be asked in medical malpractice cases is did the doctor, or other medical personnel, exercise the same level of care that the average Massachusetts doctor in the same field would have exercised? If the answer is no, the doctor has committed professional malpractice and is liable. In Massachusetts there is an interesting step that must be taken, prior to proceeding with a medical malpractice claim.
In Massachusetts, a legal claim against a physician for medical malpractice must be submitted to a “tribunal.” A tribunal is made up of a judge, an attorney, and one physician with the same medical background as the defendant. You can think of this “tribunal” as an extra step in litigation. In fact, an extra step is exactly what it is. Generally, once a claim has been filed (a claim is a lawsuit), the parties move on to discovery. However, with medical malpractice, after the claim is filed the case is submitted to the tribunal, and the tribunal makes a ruling, before the parties begin discovery. The tribunal’s job is essentially to decide whether or not the claim is “legitimate” or not. If the tribunal finds the claim has merit, the case moves forward like any other case; however, if the tribunal finds the claim does not have merit, the claim may continue, only if a six thousand dollar bond is posted.
Medical malpractice claims can be extraordinarily complex, and – if they go to trial – they often require the use of an expert witness or multiple expert witnesses. If you’ve been injured through what you believe is the negligence of a doctor or hospital or other medical staff, contact us today, to discuss your case.
What is Negligence?
Although most of us probably have at least some idea of what it means to be negligent, negligence is actually a legal term of art with a very specific meaning, from a legal perspective. Negligence is the legal backbone of almost all personal injury cases. Although there are well known areas of negligence cases, such as medical-malpractice, product-liability, and automobile-accident cases, many injuries that are the result of negligence do not fit into one of these categories.
For example, imagine you’re in an elevator, in a tall building, and the elevator malfunctions, causing you to break your arm. Clearly it’s not an automobile accident or a medical malpractice case, but – intuitively – most people would immediately recognize that someone other than themselves should be held liable. Or imagine you’re on a roller coaster at an amusement park, and it comes off the track and you’re injured very badly. Again, intuitively, you would almost immediately recognize that someone has messed up, and should be held accountable.
These are both examples of negligence cases. In a negligence lawsuit your lawyer must prove 1) that the defendant had a duty to you, 2) that the defendant breached this duty, 3) that this breach caused your injury, 4) that the defendant directly caused the injury (or very nearly directly caused it), and 5) that you suffered damages as a result.
The first two elements are not as obscure as they sound. In fact, we all have a duty, every time we go out in the world, to act with reasonable prudence, in whatever we’re doing. We breach this duty when we don’t act with reasonable prudence. What is reasonable prudence? Reasonable prudence is the care the average person would exercise, when engaging in the same activity in question. For example, a reasonably prudent person would light off fireworks, but he or she wouldn’t do it next to a gas station. To do so, would be negligent.
If you’ve been injured, and suspect that it was the result of negligence on the part of another person or entity (such as a corporation or LLC), then contact us today. We would be happy to discuss your case, and – as always – your initial consultation is fully confidential and absolutely free.