Bronx Medical Malpractice Lawyer

A claim generally needs four things: a doctor, nurse or hospital that was treating you; care that departed from accepted medical practice; proof that the departure, not the illness itself, caused harm; and real injury, such as added treatment, disability, lost earnings or death. Whether care fell below the standard is a medical question that a qualified medical expert usually has to answer from the records. A bad result alone is not malpractice.

Generally two years and six months from the malpractice, or from the last treatment where the same provider was still treating the same illness, injury or condition that gave rise to the claim (CPLR 214-a). Narrow additional rules apply to some foreign objects left in the body and to a missed cancer, and infancy can extend the time up to ten years after the claim accrues; the deadlines section on this page sets out each branch. For an ordinary personal-injury claim over care at Jacobi, Lincoln, North Central Bronx or another NYC Health + Hospitals facility, a notice of claim is due on NYC Health + Hospitals within 90 days after the claim accrues and suit within one year and 90 days, subject to any toll or late-notice relief.

Damages can include past and future medical and care costs, lost earnings and earning capacity, and pain and suffering, including loss of enjoyment of life. A spouse may have a separate claim for loss of services. When a patient dies, the estate can bring wrongful death and survival claims. The amount depends on the injury, the proof of causation and the records, so we do not quote figures before a review. Past results do not predict the outcome of another case.

Medicine involves risk, and a known complication can happen even with careful treatment. Malpractice is care that a reasonably careful provider in the same field would not have given, or failed to give, in the same situation, such as a test that was plainly needed and not ordered, or an abnormal result that was never acted on. The standard is the same wherever in New York you were treated, and it is usually shown through expert medical testimony.

We do not publish statistics for any hospital. Malpractice claims in general often involve a delayed or missed diagnosis, surgical and anesthesia errors, medication errors, emergency department discharges that should not have happened, failures to monitor a patient or a labor, and infections or pressure injuries tied to lapses in care. Whether any of these happened in your care is a question for the records and an expert review.

You do not hire one yourself. Usually, before filing, your attorney consults an appropriately licensed practitioner (a physician, or a dentist or podiatrist for those claims) and signs a certificate of merit stating there is a reasonable basis for the case (CPLR 3012-a). It is the attorney’s certificate, not an expert affidavit, and the statute allows limited alternatives, such as filing it later when a deadline is about to run, or a different certificate when a case relies only on res ipsa loquitur. Expert medical testimony is usually needed on the standard of care and causation; we arrange that review.

Records have to be collected from every provider, reviewed by medical experts, and exchanged with the hospitals and doctors’ lawyers. Depositions of the treating staff and expert disclosure follow, and the full extent of an injury may not be clear for some time. How long that takes depends on the case and the court calendar, so we do not promise a timeline. We explain what is driving the schedule in your case as it moves.

If you need medical care, get it; decisions about your treatment and doctors are for you and your medical providers. Then write down dates, names and what you were told, request copies of your records (Public Health Law 18), keep discharge papers and medication labels, and note whether the facility was an NYC Health + Hospitals site, because its 90-day notice deadline is short. Talk to a lawyer before giving a recorded statement.

We review care at any Bronx hospital, clinic or private practice. What changes the rules is who runs it. Jacobi, Lincoln and North Central Bronx are NYC Health + Hospitals facilities, where an ordinary injury claim needs a notice on NYC Health + Hospitals within 90 days of accrual. Montefiore Einstein, BronxCare and SBH Health System are private, so no municipal notice of claim applies to a claim against them. Naming a hospital here is not a suggestion that anything went wrong there.

Possibly, but a complication is not malpractice by itself. The questions are whether the surgery and the care after it met accepted practice, whether you were told the reasonably foreseeable risks and alternatives before a non-emergency procedure (Public Health Law 2805-d), and whether a departure caused the harm. Montefiore is a private hospital, so no municipal notice of claim applies and the general CPLR 214-a deadline usually controls.

The case starts in the Supreme Court with a summons and complaint, usually accompanied by the attorney’s certificate of merit, and is then served on each doctor, practice or hospital. An ordinary injury claim against NYC Health + Hospitals also needs the earlier 90-day notice. Which county the case is filed in depends on the parties and where the care happened; we confirm the court and the deadlines at the review. The consultation is free.