Misdiagnosis
Medical Misdiagnosis Attorneys Serving Victims on Long Island
At Duffy & Duffy, you will find dedicated medical malpractice lawyers who have represented Long Island residents hurt by the failure of a health care provider to properly diagnose an illness. We take these cases very seriously, focusing on understanding the details of your situation before we untangle the complex issues that often arise. We work aggressively to protect the legal rights of our clients, while also trying to ensure that medical professionals are held accountable for their careless actions.
Assert Your Right to Seek Compensation
When pursuing damages for an injury caused by a misdiagnosis, an individual typically sues the physician and hospital responsible. To prove malpractice, the victim needs to show that the doctor or other professional failed to use the appropriate level of care in the circumstances. This is a specialized standard in medical negligence cases. The victim must prove that the defendant failed to act as reasonably as a typical professional of comparable knowledge and expertise would have behaved in a similar situation. This does not mean that the doctor must be flawless, but it does require him or her to meet the level of an ordinary physician in the field.
Proving a Medical Misdiagnosis
The victim also must connect the medical professional’s breach of the standard of care to his or her harm. For example, a person claiming that a doctor failed to properly diagnose him or her with a particular illness has to show that the error caused the condition to become worse. Sometimes this may be accomplished with evidence showing that the patient would have received proper treatment sooner, had he or she been accurately diagnosed in the first place, and that the situation was exacerbated because of the delay.
The compensation available in medical malpractice cases may include money for missed wages, hospital bills, the cost of future treatment, and pain and suffering. It may sometimes be worth pursuing punitive damages, which can be awarded in addition to compensatory damages and are designed to punish a defendant for especially egregious actions.
The statute of limitations in New York medical malpractice cases requires victims to bring claims within two and a half years of when they suffered the harm. In a case involving continuous treatment, the clock usually starts to run on the last day that it is provided. This can be a complicated legal issue, and it is something that you may want to discuss with an experienced personal injury lawyer.
Enlist a Long Island Lawyer to Hold Negligent Doctors Accountable
Building upon decades of combined experience, the medical negligence attorneys at Duffy & Duffy have guided a number of clients across Long Island and the surrounding areas through a wide range of malpractice cases. Our track record of success for those we represent includes a $25 million verdict in a failure to diagnose case and a $20 million verdict in a delayed diagnosis case. We are dedicated legal professionals who focus our efforts on helping injured New York residents and their families pursue the compensation that they deserve. We proudly serve individuals in Nassau, Suffolk, and King Counties, as well as Queens and the Bronx. Contact us through our online form or call us at (516) 394-4200 to discuss your case.