Emergency Room Malpractice

(We have other offices throughout Upstate, New York)

Emergency rooms are often chaotic. It can be challenging for staff to triage a case when there are numerous patients in need of care as rapidly as possible. Sometimes there is a bit more leeway for emergency rooms than ordinary medical practices because the staff and doctors have less time to make their decisions, and so what is reasonable may be different than what is appropriate when providers are afforded significant amounts of time to diagnose and treat a condition. Even so, a hospital and ER doctor may be held accountable for malpractice. You may be wondering how much your case is worth after an ER doctor fails to diagnose or treat you, such that you are injured. It is imperative to work with trial counsel who seeks the best results. If you are concerned about medical malpractice case evaluation in connection with emergency room malpractice, you should call the seasoned Syracuse medical malpractice lawyers of DeFrancisco & Falgiatano Personal Injury Attorneys. We have more than 30 years of experience in the courtroom.

Emergency room errors may involve misdiagnosis, treatment delays, improper triage, medication errors, failure to follow-up, and failure to diagnose. They can result in significant time spent in recovery, along with pain and suffering, permanent disability, lost income, and loss of enjoyment of life. You may be able to recover damages for emergency room malpractice if our lawyers can show: (1) you were owed a professional standard of care, (2) departure from the professional standard of care, (3) causation, and (4) damages.

Properly evaluating emergency room malpractice can require analysis of a broad range of factors including liability, the damages sustained, medical evidence supporting or not supporting the emergency care provided, losses you suffered, expert opinions, and less tangible aspects of how both you and the ER provider and ER will come across to a jury.

In order to establish medical malpractice, our Syracuse lawyers will need to prove it's more likely than not: (1) the emergency room providers owed you a professional duty of care, (2) departure from the professional duty of care, (3) causation, and (4) actual damages.

Only after we establish liability will we be able to recover damages. Damages may be economic and noneconomic, and they must be proven. In most cases, economic damages will not vary significantly based on who represents you. These are typically documented, concrete losses like medical bills, lost wages, replacement services, and out-of-pocket costs. We can establish these through bills, receipts, and paystubs.

Unlike economic damages, noneconomic damages, however, can vary dramatically depending on the conscientiousness and thoroughness of your counsel. Our lawyers examine a client's case carefully to make sure all aspects of the client's life that changed as a result of ER malpractice are explored and presented in the best possible way to the jury. These losses may include pain and suffering, mental anguish, loss of consortium, and loss of enjoyment of life. Each situation is different. The jury will award these damages based partly on what losses they think would naturally flow from the types of injuries you suffered. So, for example, they may assume there is a significant loss of enjoyment of life if you were a young athletic woman who used to play recreational sports every day, but because of ER malpractice, your limbs have had to be amputated, and you can no longer play. Your spouse may have a claim for loss of consortium, if for instance, you are paralyzed as a result of a surgical error in the ER such that you can no longer have the same intimacy or relationship you had prior to becoming paralyzed.

The extent to which an ER doctor or the ER itself acted negligently will matter if the conduct is egregious. When a defendant's conduct is egregious, we may be able to recover punitive damages, which are damages intended to deter and punish wrongdoing. When evaluating how much to award in punitive damages, juries will look at what's necessary to penalize a particular defendant.

If you are concerned about medical malpractice case evaluation, you should call the tenacious Syracuse medical malpractice lawyers of DeFrancisco & Falgiatano Personal Injury Attorneys. We seek best results for patients and their families in Canandaigua, Lowville, Rochester, Utica, Auburn, Ithaca, Watertown, Herkimer, Oswego, Wampsville, Lyons, Cooperstown, Oneida, Binghamton, Elmira, Buffalo, Albany, and all of Upstate New York. Complete our online form or call us at 833-200-2000 for a free consultation.