I was rear ended by an 18-wheeler on Oct 18, 2008 and I hired attorney Mike Grossman to represent me. Mike Grossman answered my call and got everything worked out, and it has been a pleasurable experience. 
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D. Woodard
Commercial Vehicle Accident Case
Medical Malpractice Wrongful Death
Attorney Michael Grossman Explains Medical Malpractice Issues Involving Fatalities
One of the greatest things about living in an industrialized nation like the United States is that we have come to expect excellence in our medical care. Doctors spend more time in school learning their jobs than any other profession – as long as 15 years for highly specialized branches of medicine, and we hold them to very high standards. Nurses also spend seven years in college and nursing school learning their trades.
Thus, considering all of the training medical professionals receive and the amount of money they make and charge for medical procedures, they’re expected to be accurate and reliable, whether writing a prescription, seeing a patient during an office visit, or performing open-heart surgery. If the attending medical professional makes a mistake, even one due to being over-worked or just tired, killing someone, then the victim’s family has the right to seek compensation through a wrongful death lawsuit against the medical professional and/or facility that made the negligent mistake.
At Grossman Law Offices, our attorneys have spent 20 years dealing with both medical malpractice cases and wrongful death litigation of all kinds. By helping families throughout Texas and Arkansas during that time, we’ve learned firsthand the emotional and financial devastation that losing someone due to a medical malpractice mistake can be. We want to give you the opportunity to concentrate on finding a way to rebuild your life without your loved one by taking over the trying responsibility of dealing with the legal situation stemming from your loved one’s death. First, we want to give you some basic information about medical malpractice, so you can feel more comfortable about the confusing and frightening situation into which your family has been thrust.
However, this informative article is not as good of a barometer for your case as a skilled medical malpractice lawyer who is familiar with the specific details involved. If you would like to a talk with a knowledgeable professional about your legal options, then call us now for a free consultation at 1-855-589-5645 (toll free).
When Do I Have the Grounds for a Medical Malpractice Lawsuit?
Any time a person goes to see a medical professional for any reason the medical professional owes a duty to that person. In fact, whenever any two people interact, they owe each other some kind of duty not to do each other harm. However, a medical professional owes the duty not to do anything negligent that will result in the death or injury of someone under his or her care. During the course of dangerous medical procedures, patients will die due to a cruel reality of the odds when nobody has done anything negligent. In order to prove that you’re owed compensation for the death of your loved one, you’re going to need to prove the neglect of a duty by the medical professional caused your loved one’s death. To do so, you’re going to need someone on your side capable of finding the necessary proof and then utilizing it get the compensation you deserve. Considering the complexity of medical malpractice issues, you will be lost without the help of an experienced eye and mind.
What Motivation Do I Have for Filing a Wrongful Death Lawsuit Involving Medical Malpractice?
Losing a loved one can leave a family so emotionally and mentally drained that even thinking about a medical malpractice lawsuit is simply out of the question. To some, thinking about money seems tacky when you can’t stop thinking about the loved one you’ve lost. However, obtaining compensation for the suffering you’ve undergone is just one of the reasons why you should think about filing a medical malpractice wrongful death lawsuit. Second, in most cases, a wrongful death lawsuit will be your only of pursuing punishment for the party who caused your loved one’s death. Finally and most important, you must take legal action to inspire the medical professional to sharpen his or her negligent actions. In the event that a doctor or nurse is repeatedly negligent, then legal action is the only way to protect others by alerting authorities to the unsuitability of the doctor or medical institution. Dangerous medical professionals can be stripped of their licenses, and shady medical facilities can be shut down. Moreover, a family can pursue a wrongful death lawsuit whether or not criminal charges have been filed in the case.
By no means do we intend to downplay the importance of securing compensation, either. When your family has been harmed financially by the wrongful death of a loved one due to medical malpractice, then your family members should not be forced to shoulder that economic burden alone.
What is a Statute of Limitations in General and for Medical Malpractice Specifically?
The statute of limitations is the period of time wronged that you have to take legal action to rectify a wrong committed against you, or the amount of time the state has to take legal action after a criminal act.
For a medical malpractice wrongful death lawsuit in Texas and Arkansas, that period is two years beginning from the point in time at which the loved ones became aware of the death.
Though the law affords plenty of time to file a wrongful death lawsuit after a medical malpractice incident, it’s best to take immediate action. Otherwise, evidence could become harder to find, and your case harder to win.
Pursuable Compensation in Medical Malpractice Wrongful Death Lawsuit
When a loved one has been killed due to medical malpractice, the family has the right to seek restitution for the individual economic and emotional suffering of the family members, known as wrongful death damages, as well as the suffering of the victim, known as survival damages. Wrongful death damages can be pursued by the spouse, children, and parents of the deceased, and these damages can include restitution for:
- Mental and emotional suffering.
- Funeral expenses.
- Loss of financial support that the victim supplied prior to dying.
- Loss of the consortium and unique parental and spousal support the victim provided.
Survival damages may only be pursued by one of the victim’s relatives, usually the closet living relative, starting with the spouse, followed by children, parents, and then siblings are also eligible to pursue survival damages. Survival damages are intended to give the closest living relative the ability to obtain the restitution the victim should have been due for:
- Any medical bills to treat the harm caused in the medical malpractice that were incurred prior to death.
- The victim’s pain and suffering.
- The victim’s mental and emotional anguish.
The problem with medical malpractice laws in this state is that they are designed to benefit medical professionals and their insurance carriers. The minimum amount of medical malpractice insurance allowed in Texas is much lower than Arkansas, but even in Arkansas, medical malpractice insurance will usually not come close to covering the true value of the wrongful death of a loved one. In addition, the standard of proof in these cases is much higher than in a typical wrongful death lawsuit. Medical tort reforms were made in Texas allegedly to keep the costs of medical malpractice insurance down, but premiums are higher today than they were before the reforms, as the insurance company keeps all of the benefits without passing on the savings to medical professionals and institutions.
How Grossman Law Offices can Help you Win Your Case
The insurance company or the defense lawyers will try to bring in “medical experts” whom they will try to use to suggest their clients weren’t responsible for your loved one’s death. If you want to be able to hold the responsible party liable, then you’re going to need an experienced lawyer who’s not intimidated by mountains of paperwork and medical evidence and has access to his or her own medical experts to help prove exactly why the negligent party was liable for the fatal medical malpractice.
To put it as simply as we can, someone with no legal experience stands little chance of ending up with the compensation he or she deserves after a loved one dies in a medical malpractice mishap and are likely to end up with nothing at all.
At Grossman Law Offices, we have the experience, knowledge and skill to protect your family’s right to compensation. We negotiated settlements with most major insurance companies and taken hundreds of wrongful death cases to court, winning several millions of dollars for our clients. We are dedicated to doing whatever we can to make sure you are compensated for the loss your family has sustained. Moreover, we want to do whatever we can to stop medical professionals who negligently endanger their patients. Fortunately, our reputation for excellence often motivates insurance companies to fairly compensate our clients with a pretrial settlement; thus, our clients are spared additional stress and uncertainty.
The only chance you have to bring some good out of what happened to your loved one is to take legal action and prevent further negligence. Call us now to find out how we can help. Our lawyers are available any time to discuss the specifics of your case, so you can call us toll free for a free consultation at 1-855-589-5645. Call now and begin taking action to honor your loved one’s memory.
Our firm was hired by the minor child and parents of a young man who was killed in a motorcycle accident after being over served alcohol at a South Padre Island bar. The plaintiffs hired our firm to investigate the claim on the basis that the decedent was over the legal limit at the time of his death. In initial attempts to settle the case out of court, the defendants denied liability. Suit was filed soon thereafter.
The defendants initially argued that the decedent never consumed alcohol on their premises. Through physical evidence and deposition testimony to the contrary, we were able to conclusively prove that the decedent had indeed been drinking at the establishment.
The defendants then asserted allegations that the decedent's minor child was not actually his biological child, which would bar his claim entirely. A DNA test was performed and this argument was defeated.
The defendants then asserted the safe harbor defense. Our attorneys argued that the defendants did not qualify for safe harbor protection due to the fact that their servers were not all licensed providers. However, while this element was being addressed, our attorneys focused their attention on addressing the second element of the safe harbor defense regarding the bar's encouragement of the over service of alcohol. The defendants claimed that they would never serve the double-shot Bacardi cocktails that witnesses claimed the decedent drank several of. We sent private investigators into the bar to order the same drinks that the decedent consumed on the night of his death and the very same bar tenders who over served the decedent, without hesitation, served copious amounts of alcohol to the investigators, all of which was captured on hidden camera.
Once the safe harbor defense was defeated, the defendants argued that the decedent's BAC was low enough at the time of his death (as recorded by the hospital) that he would not have necessarily appeared obviously intoxicated to the servers and therefore the bar should not be held liable even if he had been over served. Eyewitness testimony refuted this.
Additionally, our firm's testifying medical expert reviewed the medical records related to the emergency helicopter flight that transported the decedent to the hospital after his accident. She determined that the EMS technicians administered numerous blood transfusions while in flight. Armed with this newfound data, our medical expert reverse extrapolated and determined conclusively that the decedent's BAC was actually in the range of .19-.21 at the time of the accident, though it was drastically diluted by the time he arrived at the hospital, which accounted for the relatively low BAC found in the hospital's medical records. This testimony proved to be pivotal in the case, resulting in a successful recovery for our clients.
$350,000.00
$140,000.00
$40,000.00
Recovery for the father of a young man who was killed in a car accident.
$95,035.00
$31,678.00
$25.00
Recovered for client injured in a liquor liability accident.
$100,000.00
$40,000.00
$5,000.00
An airline pilot suffered a shoulder injury resulting in surgery when he was sideswiped by an 18-wheeler. The case was resolved through litigation, as establishing liability was a contentious matter. The defendants claimed that the plaintiff made an illegal passing maneuver, but the evidence showed that the defendant made a sweeping turn and intruded upon our client's right of way.
$475,000.00
$158,333.00
$5,000.00
Recovery for car accident victim who suffered back injury resulting in surgery.
$100,000.00
$33,000.00
$100.00
Recovery for victim of dental malpractice. Plaintiff suffered infection after wrong surgery was performed.
$125,000.00
$41,250.00
$5,000.00
Recovery for client who suffered nerve damage and required steroid injections as a result of a car accident.
$150,000.00
$50,000.00
$4,800.00
Recovery for client who suffered soft tissue injuries when she was struck by an 18-wheeler.
$41,000.00
$13,666.00
$135.00
Our firm was hired by a young woman who was rear-ended by an 18-wheeler when she slowed for traffic in a construction zone. Initially, she attempted to represent herself and the insurance carrier offered roughly $1,000 to settle her case. She then contacted our firm and we filed suit soon after our initial investigation. The case was successfully resolved in litigation.
$187,500.00
$61,875.00
$2,500.00
Recovery for the victim of a car accident.
$25,000.00
$8,250.00
$100.00