Medical Malpractice

A bad result is not the same thing as malpractice. The question is whether the care you were given fell below the standard a competent provider would have met, and whether that failure is what caused the harm.

What Makes a Claim

Medicine carries risk, and an honest complication is not negligence. A malpractice claim needs four things: a provider who owed you proper care, care that fell short of the accepted standard, harm that followed from that failure, and losses the law can compensate. Each one has to be proved, which is why these cases turn on records and on what a qualified expert says about them.

Matters We Look At

We review claims involving hospitals, physicians, nurses and long-term care, including:

• Surgical errors, including procedures performed on the wrong site or left unfinished
• Missed, delayed or plainly wrong diagnoses
• Medication and pharmacy errors, including the wrong drug or the wrong dose
• Failure to monitor a patient or to act on results that called for treatment
• Birth injuries to a mother or a baby
• Anesthesia complications
• Neglect and substandard care in nursing and residential facilities

The Insurance Company Is on the Other Side

Doctors, hospitals and care facilities carry malpractice insurance, and it is the insurer, not the provider, that runs the defense. The carrier picks the defense lawyers, hires the experts and decides what the claim is worth to it. S. Christopher Copple handles the firm's malpractice cases, and the carrier on the other side uses the same playbook Doug Dieker has spent 25 years answering in insurance claims of every other kind. Delay, low valuation and a flat denial without a reasonable basis look no different here.

What a Case Involves

The first step is the records. Arizona requires a written opinion from a qualified medical expert to support a malpractice claim, so the file has to be read by someone who practises in the right field before the case goes anywhere. Christopher handles that review and tells you honestly what he finds, including when the answer is that there is no case worth bringing.

There are deadlines, and they are shorter than most people expect. If you think something went wrong, call early rather than late, even if you are unsure.

What You Can Recover

It depends on the facts and on the coverage, but a claim can take in the cost of the medical care needed to put things right, care you will still need in the future, income lost while you could not work, and compensation for the pain and the disruption to your life. Where a patient has died, the family may have a wrongful death claim of their own.

How We Help

Call and speak to a lawyer, not an intake screen. The first consultation is free, we will tell you plainly whether the claim is worth pursuing, and cases are handled on a contingency basis: if we do not recover anything for you, you do not owe us a fee.