Riverside Medical Malpractice Attorneys

If you or a family member have been a victim of medical malpractice, you can file a claim against the negligent party. There are time limits as to when you are allowed to file, special procedural steps that you must take, and you must be aware of California’s cap on certain kinds of medical malpractice damages.

How long do you have to file a medical malpractice suit in Riverside? In California, you must file a medical malpractice lawsuit no later than three years after the date of injury or one year after you discover the injury. After three years, you lose your right to file a claim. 

Parents or legal guardians have three years from the date of the alleged malpractice to file a claim on behalf of minors. If the child is under the age of six, the parent or legal guardian has three years to file or has until the child’s eighth birthday, whichever timeline provides a larger filing window.

Under California law, the statute of limitations will be tolled (or stopped temporarily) for any period during which the minor’s parent or guardian, the defendant’s insurer, or the health care provider committed fraud or collusion in connection with the failure to bring a medical malpractice action on the minor’s behalf.

California’s Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act (MICRA) places a $250,000 cap on non-economic damages in medical malpractice lawsuits, such as pain and suffering, physical impairment, loss of enjoyment of life, and/or loss of consortium. 

Victims of medical malpractice are entitled to monetary compensation because the damage caused by negligence normally cannot be fixed. Money also helps victims pay for future therapy, surgeries, and adaptive equipment. The average payout of a verdict or settlement in a medical malpractice claim nationally is approximately $242,000. 

There is a formula to determine how much money to award a victim of medical negligence or the victim’s family in a wrongful death case. 

• Value = Economic Damages (past & future) + Noneconomic Damages (past & future)

This determines the value a jury places on your verdict. The challenge is to figure out what numbers to use in the formula. Past economic damages can be fairly easily calculated, but future damages are harder to determine. They include:

• Future medical and therapeutic expenses, including surgeries
• Future lost wages
• Future adaptive devices like prosthetic limbs, medical devices, and wheelchairs
• Future medications

Non-economic damages cannot be precisely calculated. They include past and future pain, suffering, mental anguish, disfigurement, and inconvenience. These are subjective, and it is hard to know what value a judge, jury, defense lawyer, or insurance adjuster will put on non-economic damages. The cap for non-economic damages is $250,000 in California.

In California, you can recover compensatory damages if you have been injured by medical malpractice and suffered financially due to (but not limited to):

• Medical bills for medical treatments, medications, etc.
• Home health medical care
• Physical and occupational therapy
• Lost wages
• Lost earning capacity
• Non-economic damages such as pain and suffering and loss of enjoyment of life

You can also recover up to $250,000 in medical malpractice damages for non-economic losses you may have incurred, including:

• Pain
• Suffering
• Inconvenience
• Scarring
• Disfigurement
• Physical impairment
• Loss of the use of an organ or limb
• Loss of life enjoyment

The 4 D’s of medical negligence are duty, deviation from the standard of care, damages, and direct cause.

• Duty: medical practitioners have a duty of care for all of their patients to the level of what a normal practitioner would do in the same situation. A patient who is not in the direct care of a provider cannot claim that the provider had a duty of care toward that patient. 
• Deviation from the standard of care: the “standard of care” is the type and quality of care that would be reasonably provided by a healthcare provider of the same status as the treating provider. A health care provider who deviates from that standard of care could be considered medically negligent.
• Damages: the medical negligence of a healthcare provider, whether by action or inaction, resulted in real damages to the patient.
• Direct cause: the injury, harm, or death suffered by the patient was directly caused by the provider’s negligence.