PERSONAL INJURY?

The differences between general personal injury and medical malpractice are obvious when you have been through a medical negligence case. These claims are extremely difficult, requiring extensive time, research and documentation. They also typically cost far more to litigate and to take to trial. The following are other distinctions between these areas of practice:

• Complexity – Personal injury claims are much wider in scope but are usually not very complicated. Medical malpractice claims deal exclusively with injuries related to medical and hospital care, and they often turn on the nuances of difficult medical issues.
• Issues in Dispute – In many personal injury claims, negligence is admitted. The driver who crashed the stop sign and was cited by the police typically admits fault. In medical negligence cases, doctors and hospitals typically fight tooth and nail to deny, deny, and deny fault, even in cases where their conduct seems indefensible.
• Affidavit of Merit­ – A person bringing a medical negligence case must obtain an affidavit (a sworn statement) from a physician saying that the defendant was negligent and caused injury before he can file a lawsuit. No other personal injury cases have this pre-suit requirement.
• Expert Witnesses – Medical negligence cases typically require the hiring of multiple expert witnesses, whose fees for reviewing records and providing objective opinion testimony can be very high. This makes medical negligence cases much more expensive (and risky) to pursue.
• Statute of limitations – In most states, the statute of limitations is different for bodily personal injury claims than for medical malpractice suits. In Ohio, the time limit to file an Ohio personal injury suit for bodily injury typically is two years, beginning from the date of injury. The time limit to file suit for medical negligence, however, is shorter. An injured patient has one year to file suit for medical negligence. (However, determining when the one-year clock starts “ticking” for a medical malpractice suit isn’t clear cut, since various “exceptions” exist to “toll” or hold the starting of the clock.) And if the medical negligence causes death, a two-year time limit to seek redress for the wrongful death may apply. (The preceding is a simple summary of the time limits. Please check with an attorney to see exactly what time limit applies to your situation.)
• Success rates – In line with the complexity of a medical malpractice suit, they are far more difficult to prove. And, statistics show a much higher plaintiff success rate for general personal injury cases than for medical malpractice suits. This underscores the need to make sure that you retain an attorney with extensive experience and intricate knowledge of medical malpractice claims, which comes only from an exclusive focus on its practice.