The Power Equalizers
No opponent is too big
“I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures [that] are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.”
Hippocratic Oath, Modern Version
Despite their best intentions and the oaths taken after completing their schooling, doctors, surgeons, nurses, and other medical professionals occasionally subject their patients to serious injury or death as a result of a mistake, negligence, or intentional actions. At the Marcarian Law Firm, P.C. we understand that if you or a loved one has been injured or died as a result of medical malpractice, you may be very confused about what steps to take next. While we understand that consulting with an attorney may be the furthest thing from your mind, we encourage you to reach out to our experienced attorneys to discuss your situation and protect your rights.
Unfortunately, medical malpractice cases arise in several situations, including:
Working with an experienced, knowledgeable, and local attorney can help you understand what happened leading up to your injury or the death of your loved one. The attorneys at the Marcarian Law Firm will help you understand the legal process and will provide you with the personalized attention you need to protect your rights and move past this unfortunate event.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have said that medical mistakes are the third leading cause of death in the US. According to their data, approximately 250,000 people lose their lives each year due to mistakes made by medical professionals. Studies show that millions of others across this country are injured or become ill due to these medical errors. Often, those who do survive medical errors are left with significant disabilities that can affect them for the rest of their lives.
As mentioned above, medical malpractice cases in California often fall into one of two categories:
At the Marcarian Law Firm, we handle both types of medical malpractice cases and often handle them on a contingency fee basis. That means that if we accept the case, we will handle all or most of the upfront costs associated with it and will wait to get paid until we have obtained a settlement or verdict on your behalf. We handle top medical malpractice cases on a contingency fee basis because we understand that after you have lost a loved one or suffered an injury due to a doctor’s or medical professional’s wrongful actions, the last thing you want to worry about is paying for an attorney.
It is important to understand that victims of medical malpractice need to act promptly. The law in California limits the amount of time a person can file a lawsuit against the allegedly negligent medical provider in these cases. Our team will be able to analyze the facts of your case and help determine the best steps moving forward, including when it will be necessary to file a claim.
Various types of compensation may be available to Los Angeles Medical Malpractice Attorneys victims. At the Marcarian Law Firm, our dedicated and experienced team works diligently to obtain the following types of economic and non-economic compensation on behalf of our clients:
The total amount of compensation available in these cases will vary depending on the factors related to each particular malpractice claim. Our attorneys work with competent economic and financial experts to properly calculate the total losses our clients sustain.
If you or somebody you love has been injured or become ill due to the negligence of a medical provider, contact the team at the Marcarian Law Firm as soon as possible. Our attorneys will work diligently to recover full compensation for your losses. We are not afraid to stand up to aggressive insurance carriers or well-funded medical agencies. When you need a Los Angeles Medical Malpractice Attorney, you can contact us for an initial consultation of your case by clicking here or calling 818-995-8787 or 800-924-3784.
We offer no-obligation consultations to individuals who have been injured or lost a loved one as a result of medical negligence and encourage you to contact us, our hospital malpractice attorney, at 800-924-3784 to discuss the specifics of your case. Let us help you decide what step to take next.
One of the more common forms of medical malpractice is what I call failure to timely or adequately diagnose a medical condition. Unfortunately, that happens fairly routinely. You typically see that in cancer cases. For instance, a patient with breast cancer goes in for imaging or testing and the radiologist reads the images as normal. Six or nine months later the patient presents with a lump in the breast which turns out to be a cancerous mass. Now, the first question is: Did the first radiologist miss it? Another example is ovarian cancer and other forms of cancer. Unfortunately, failure to diagnose cancer cases occurs frequently. There are other forms of medical malpractice. For instance, a heart patient with coronary vessel disease receives the wrong treatment Instead of open heart surgery to treat his heart vessels, he gets one or more stents placed in some of his blocked vessels. The patient dies because not all of his heart vessels were treated. A great majority of calls we receive are where the patient is angry and does not get a good result. It is sometimes difficult to convince these callers that a bad result does not equate to malpractice. There has to be a deviation from the standard of care. There has to be a breach of the standard of care. Not only that, the breach of the standard of care has to be a substantial cause of the patient’s harm. Without either one of those components, there is no medical malpractice claim.
Absolutely. This is a special type of medical malpractice lawsuit called a wrongful death claim. If the patient dies because of a healthcare provider’s medical negligence, there is a claim for wrongful death. The law allows the deceased patient’s survivors to sue on their behalf for both economic damages (loss of income, etc.) and non-economic damages (loss of love, companionship, comfort, care, assistance, protection, affection, society, and moral support).
After an attorney is provided with a complete set of medical records for the victim of malpractice or the deceased, the attorney and his medical consultants review and analyze the medical records to make an evaluation or assessment to see if there was negligence. Once that is done and the attorney has a good-faith basis that there is a potential claim, one of the first things he is required to do is send out what is called “a notice of intent to sue” letter to the medical provider who was negligent before filing a lawsuit. Generally, medical malpractice cases in California are governed by a one year statute of limitations. If the notice of intent to sue letter is sent out within the last 90 days of the running of the statute of limitations, it tolls (or suspends) the statute for a brief period. The purpose of the intent to sue letter is to provide the medical provider with a reasonable opportunity to respond. If you do not get an adequate response or you do not get a response from the medical provider, then a lawsuit may be filed, or, as the case may be, a demand for arbitration may be initiated, as in Kaiser cases.
Once there are clinical signs or symptoms suggesting that something is not right following a procedure or surgery, the individual needs to seek additional medical help, perhaps to obtain a second opinion from a doctor to find out why he or she is experiencing those clinical symptoms or why the patient died. Once that is done, and depending on the information he or she obtains from the second medical provider, the potential client should contact a lawyer to discuss the matter. The first thing I tell individuals who contact me is that a bad result does not mean malpractice. For us to assess and evaluate your case, we need your full set of medical records. We will then review them internally and in-house and send them out for review to the appropriate medical professional.
There are two main elements to any medical malpractice claim. They are standards of care and causation. Causation is a major obstacle in the substantial majority of medical malpractice cases. Another very common obstacle is finding a law firm or attorney who is willing to accept a medical malpractice case. There are a couple of main reasons for that. One, those attorneys who do medical malpractice cases understand the significance of being able to establish the causation element in medical malpractice cases. They understand that the cards are generally stacked against them when it comes to causation. So there are fewer and fewer attorneys and law firms willing to sign up a victim of a medical malpractice case. The second reason is the cap on general damages imposed by the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act. As a major component of MICRA, which was enacted in 1975, the California legislature placed a $250,000 cap on non-economic damages. The cap amount has not changed since L975. It is very significant in cases where the patient has presented his full medical records to a law firm for evaluation and assessment; the law firm has done its work and has sent it out for review; and the law firm’s experts are saying that yes, it is a pretty good medical malpractice case. But the lawyers know that it is going to cost them about $100,000 to prosecute the case, which comes out of the lawyer’s pocket. This means that if he or she is successful and gets the full $250,000, there is only $150,000 left for the victim and the law firm. The MICRA limitation is a sad reality and is the reason decent cases are turned down because the maximum recovery for non-economic damages under MICRA is $250,000. At the Marcarian Law Firm, we have handled a number of these MICRA cases. We do not decline a case only because it is a MICRA case, but we certainly consider that one of the factors before we decide to sign up a client. Those are the two major obstacles.
Most medical-provider physicians are independent contractors. They are not “employees” of the hospital where the alleged malpractice occurs. In a case where malpractice took place in a hospital, the law firm, after analyzing all the facts to make an evaluation, will typically name the hospital as one of the potential defendants because the acts or omissions that formed the basis of the lawsuit occurred in the hospital. Hospital malpractice is just another variation or form of medical negligence, in this case against the hospital and the physicians who participated in the patient’s care, as the case may be. The nurse’s negligence resulted in the death of the patient, and the hospital was determined to be the entity fully responsible for her death.
There are a number of fine lawyers who do medical malpractice cases, and we are right up there with them. One of the things we do at our office is generally start and finish with the client. This means we are very involved from the initial client interview all the way through to trial or arbitration. For our firm, doing that is a major benefit because we learn about the case as we go along. At some of the other firms, associates and paralegals do the legwork up until the time the case comes up to trial. There are some very great trial lawyers with great skills and experience, but those lawyers are at a major disadvantage because they have not been intimately involved with the case. They do not know the minutia facts. That is one reason we feel we are a very good choice. I [Armond Marcarian] have over 27 years of experience as a registered pharmacist in addition to my legal experience. At the Marcarian Law Firm, we can perform an initial in-house review and analysis of the medical records, thereby saving the client some money and time before we turn to the experts for analysis of the issues. The fourth reason is that we are tenacious.