We rely on medical providers to deliver effective healthcare that will heal our injuries or cure our ailments. This requires medical providers to render treatment within the accepted standard of care that we can expect other providers to do for us in similar situations.
Most of the time, we receive this level of care and treatment. However, this is not always the case. Sometimes a healthcare provider can leave us in a worse position with new injuries, disabilities, and even the death of a loved one.
Despite this, healthcare providers use many common defenses to medical malpractice claims to escape liability and protect their licenses. Some insurance carriers and Florida defense lawyers will assert rigorous defenses to protect dangerous doctors or healthcare providers.
If you or someone you love suffered an injury because of a doctor or medical professional’s negligence, an experienced Florida medical malpractice lawyer can help. Medical malpractice claims are complex, and hospitals and clinics will have large legal teams fighting against you. You deserve someone on your side who will fight back and protect your future.
Medical Malpractice is a Serious Problem in the U.S. and Florida
The problem is more significant than most people may imagine. According to a study from John Hopkins University, preventable medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the United States, behind heart disease and cancer. This amounts to more than 250,000 Americans dying yearly due to preventable medical mistakes or errors.
Another study estimated this figure to be much higher, even as high as 440,000 preventable deaths yearly due to medical mistakes. These statistics do not include injured individuals who do not die due to medical malpractice.
According to the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB) of Florida, over 7,200 adverse action reports and medical malpractice payment reports were filed in just the Sunshine State in one recent year.
An “adverse action” is any report, complaint, or legal action filed against a physician. This database does not include claims filed against hospitals, practice groups, nurses, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, or other providers who are not medical doctors. As a result, the true number of adverse actions against healthcare providers in just Florida is likely to be much higher—and much more concerning.
The problem with determining the actual number of medical malpractice cases is that healthcare providers often control that data. Reporting injuries or death caused by medical mistakes could place their license and livelihood on the line. This incentivizes them to hide medical errors or use defenses to medical malpractice claims to escape liability. For these reasons, many have stressed to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to change how a patient’s cause of death could be reported.
Medical Malpractice Claims & Negligence in Florida
One must first understand medical malpractice to understand the common defenses used in a medical malpractice case. Most personal injury claims are based on a type of cause of action (or claim) called “negligence.” Medical malpractice cases are also based on negligence and occur when a healthcare provider’s negligent act or omission causes an injury to a patient.
In determining whether a healthcare provider’s act or omission was negligent, he or she is measured against the “standard of care.” To establish liability against a healthcare provider such as a doctor, hospital, nurse, or other providers, a victim must establish a violation of or deviation from the standard of care. This is what most medical malpractice cases revolve around.
Most Common Legal Defenses in Medical Malpractice Cases
While a Florida medical malpractice victim or family fights to establish the standard of care and how the defendant violated it, medical professionals and their defense lawyers will use several common defenses to reduce their liabilities.
Many of these defenses are strong and require an experienced medical malpractice lawyer in Florida, like ours at Prosper Shaked Accident Injury Attorneys PA, to overcome the defense. Some of these medical malpractice defenses are based on the elements of negligence and medical malpractice, while other defenses are based on the merits or procedure.
Some of the most common defenses to medical malpractice cases in Florida include the following:
- Not Below the Standard of Care/Not a Deviation
- No Causation
- No Damages
- Natural Consequences
- Assumed Risk of the Procedure/Patient Gave Informed Consent
- No Guarantees
- Pre-existing Conditions/Co-Morbidities
- Non-Compliant Patient
- Another Provider’s Fault (Finger Pointing)
- Statute of Limitations
Not Below the Standard of Care/Not a Deviation
Naturally, the first med mal defense will be that the healthcare provider’s conduct was not below the standard of care. The defense will argue that the healthcare provider’s actions were acceptable under the standard of care or even exceeded what a reasonably prudent healthcare provider would have done in similar circumstances. The defendant, a healthcare provider, and an expert for the defense will usually assert this.
The victim, however, is often not a healthcare provider. Therefore, they must hire an expert to determine the standard of care and how the medical professional failed to meet that standard of care. As you can see, in a medical malpractice case, the defense already has a “free” expert in that the defendant can opine on the standard of care, but the victim must hire an expert.
Oftentimes this means that more individuals are on the defense side, arguing that the standard of care was met as opposed to the injured medical malpractice victim’s side. To fight back, you absolutely need an experienced medical malpractice lawyer from Prosper Shaked Accident Injury Attorneys PA to represent you from the start.
No Causation
The next most common defense used in medical malpractice cases is no causation. This refers to the elements of medical negligence which require a plaintiff to establish, including:
1) a duty of care (standard of care)
2) a breach of that duty (breach of the standard of care or deviation from the standard of care)
3) the breach caused
4) damages to the plaintiff
Thus, defense lawyers will argue that even if there was a deviation from the standard of care, the deviation was not the proximate cause or a substantial factor in causing damages to the plaintiff. Essentially, the defense is arguing that the mistakes by the healthcare provider did not cause your injuries. They may even blame your injuries on natural outcomes.
No Damages
Rounding out the defenses based on the pure elements of a negligence case, if a deviation from the standard of care and causation were established, defense lawyers would then argue that the plaintiff did not sustain any damages from the medical provider’s mistake.
This commonly comes up in cancer misdiagnosis cases, where a defense will argue that the delay in diagnosing a patient’s cancer did not cause further or additional damages than the victim was already experiencing. For example, they might argue that the victim still had cancer and needed chemotherapy, radiation, surgery, or other treatment.
Defendants also exercise a “catch-22” situation. If your loved one died because of their cancer, they’d claim that the cancer was terminal. Thus the medical malpractice did not worsen the outcome. Or if your loved one survived, the defense will argue that there are no damages because the patient lived.
However, an experienced medical malpractice lawyer like our missed and delayed cancer treatment lawyer in Florida knows these arguments are attenuated. Many times the delay of a cancer diagnosis could increase the intensity of treatment needed and a patient’s conscious pain and suffering.
In wrongful death cases, we can hire experts to establish whether the patient’s cancer was terminal when it was first missed or delayed in diagnosis. Further, when a patient survives, the delay in cancer treatment could increase the future risk of cancer reoccurring more aggressively. Thus, these are damages that less experienced med mal lawyers may miss.
Natural Consequences
Outside of the elemental defenses relating to just “negligence,” defense lawyers often claim that the injuries sustained by a victim were the “natural consequences” of treatment or the victim’s condition. Thus, defense lawyers will argue that they cannot be liable for natural consequences such as birth complications that they claim were “unavoidable.”
Never fall for this trick, as most complications and natural consequences can be avoided with proper monitoring, assessment, evaluation, and treatment. Medical doctors often use this lingo or buzzword right to your face after complications arise. If you heard this phrase, contact our Florida medical malpractice lawyer immediately because it is often a red flag.
Assumed Risk of the Procedure/Patient Gave Informed Consent
Another very common defense is that the patient consented to the risks of the procedure and, therefore, “assumed the risk” of the complications.
Most of us are familiar with this principle, particularly for medications advertised on TV that list every possible side effect. These risks are also listed and signed before a medical procedure.
While this can be an absolute defense, the risks are often not explained to the patient before the surgery. Sometimes providers forget, other times, they remember after the patient has been administered a sedative like Versed (Midazolam) and cannot give actual consent due to the effects of the drug. Further, some attempts to explain the procedure’s risks are ineffective entirely if a procedure extends beyond what the patient gave informed consent for. Most importantly, a patient does not give informed consent and does not assume the risk of negligent medical care or treatment errors.
No Guarantees
It is well-established that a healthcare provider cannot guarantee a particular outcome. A medical professional’s defense team may argue this when a basic procedure goes wrong. They’re looking to make a jury believe that nothing is guaranteed.
While this can be a good defense in certain instances, oftentimes, it is a horrible excuse for medical malpractice and negligent conduct. Make sure to hire a med mal lawyer who can effectively diffuse this argument and turn it around on the defense, i.e., that it was a basic procedure rarely botched, suggesting negligence or gross negligence.
Pre-existing Conditions/Co-Morbidities
Defense lawyers often try to claim a patient’s pre-existing condition or co-morbidities were the cause of an adverse health result. While this sounds like a reasonable contention, this is often a horrible argument because a healthcare provider should know or should have known about a patient’s pre-existing conditions or co-morbidities prior to a procedure or surgery, and taken them into account when rendering care.
The fact that a patient may have a condition like diabetes, high blood pressure, is obese, or any other condition cannot be used as a shield against downright negligent conduct.
Some inexperienced medical malpractice attorneys may fall prey to this defense, but our experienced team at Prosper Shaked Accident Injury Attorneys PA knows how to fight back against this common defense and even turn it around on the defense. We ask the questions that need to be asked, such as: “Why did you perform surgery when you did not know relevant information about a patient’s health?”
Non-Compliant Patient
Some defense medical malpractice attorneys will blame the patient for their injuries by claiming that the patient was non-compliant with medical instructions. This often occurs in hospital falls where a patient gets out of bed and suffers a catastrophic injury. While at first glance this may appear to be the patient’s fault, some patients are “fall risks,” and it is the duty of the hospital and healthcare provider to guard against foreseeable injuries to fall-risk patients.
Other times, the patient tried to get up alone because no healthcare provider answered repeated calls for assistance, and the patient had to take self-help remedies. Both situations are not a non-compliant patient, but a negligent healthcare provider. Do not let this type of defense derail your Florida medical malpractice claim.
Another Provider’s Fault (Finger Pointing)
It is not often that a defense attorney will blame another healthcare provider for the patient’s injuries. That claim inherently admits that there has been some medical malpractice. But it still happens when a surgeon blames an anesthesiologist for surgical errors, or a nursing home blames a hospital for a pressure sore on a transferred patient.
The most important way to handle this type of common defense to medical malpractice cases in Florida is to ensure your experienced attorney has commenced a timely action against all providers who may have liability. This will ensure that a defendant is not shifting blame to a party outside the lawsuit. If you have done that, this type of defense will likely serve to help your claim.
Statute of Limitations
The last common defense is a procedural defense, which is not premised on the merits of your medical malpractice claim. Instead, it is based on a Florida rule of procedure. The statute of limitations is a defense asserted in almost every type of lawsuit, especially medical malpractice cases. The statute of limitations is a time limit on filing a lawsuit imposed by the Legislature. All types of lawsuits have different statute of limitations periods or time limits.
Medical malpractice cases have one of the tightest time limits. While Florida law expressly provides how long a victim and his or her family may have in a statute, that number is often not correct. This is because there are some “tolls” or extensions to the time limit that might apply, such as for birth injury cases. But there are also some instances where the time period may shrink, especially against municipal defendants. These tolls or shrinking periods are not codified in the same area as the statute of limitations. Some are in other areas of statutory law, and others are in the common law or judge-made law created through judicial decision writing.
As a result, assessing the time period that you have to file a medical malpractice case is done on a case-by-case basis. All you need to know is that there is a very short time to file a medical malpractice lawsuit in Florida, and it is never too early to find the best medical malpractice lawyer to represent you.
Hire Our Florida Attorneys for Your Medical Malpractice Case
We will not let defense lawyers use common defenses to medical malpractice cases to escape liability after harming a patient. Medical malpractice is a huge problem in the United States, and we are fighting to change that – one patient at a time.
If you or a loved one suffered any personal injuries due to the negligence of a healthcare provider in Florida, learn how our experienced medical malpractice lawyers at Prosper Shaked Accident Injury Attorneys PA can help protect your rights to compensation under the law. We offer a FREE case evaluation which you can schedule by calling (305) 694-2676. We are here to help and look forward to speaking with you.