Medical Malpractice Claim Value

Answer:

When people come to us after being injured due to hospital negligence, they want to know what is the value of their medical malpractice case. Because there are so many variables in these situations, there is no easy answer that can be given right away. First, if you’re able to physically recover from whatever damage you’ve suffered, that case has a lot less value to it than a case where you’ve suffered a permanent injury. We have to see what the extent of your recovery is before we even begin to think of what the value of the case may be.

Under Georgia law, the things you’re entitled to recover when you’re injured due to the negligence of another are broken down into two categories. The first one is called special damages. This is lost income and medical expenses. It’s easy to determine the value of those things.

The harder one to determine is non-economic damages. These are things like the amount of pain and suffering you’ve had over a given period, or the amount of pain and suffering you may have in the future, things such as the loss of ability to live your life the way you want to. For example, if you played a lot of tennis and now you can no longer play tennis ever again because of this injury, that’s a life pleasure that you don’t get to experience anymore. You’re entitled to compensation for those things.

In working through these types of claims, we have to look at all the different variables in addition to the liability aspect. There are not a lot of clear liability medical malpractice claims. Doctors always tend to claim that what they did was the right thing. They’re always able to go out and find experts that will say most anything they want them to say for a price. You have to evaluate the strength of your claim in addition to how much insurance coverage they have, which for doctors is usually fairly substantial.

The best thing to do if you think you have been injured due to the negligence of a doctor or nurse is to see a personal injury attorney right away to make sure that you can present your case in the most effective way possible.