What You Must Prove in a Medical Malpractice Case in the State of Utah?

A lot of medical malpractice is governed by statute and by common law and these are the things

you need.

Number one, you need a duty. Not a doody but a duty. There must be someone or somebody that

owes you a duty to perform correctly. So there has to be a relationship. Obviously if you go to a

doctor and he misdiagnosis you, there's a relationship. There's a patient-physician relationship. So

that's the first thing you need is a duty.

The second thing you need is a breach- a breach of the standard of care. A breach can be proved

one of two ways; the first way is that the doctor failed to do what he is supposed to do according

to the standard. The second way is that he did something that he wasn't supposed to do. So, the

two ways to prove breach are failure to do something that he should have done or he did something

that he should not have done. He or she, or the facility, for that matter.

The third thing you need, is proximate cause or causation, that's what attorneys call it. In other

words, whatever the doctor did or didn't do must directly cause the problem that you have. It isn't

enough that it happened, bad things happen all the time, but whatever the physician did or didn't

do has to directly cause (that's what we call causation) the harm that the patient has,

So, we've talk about duty, we've talked about breach, we've talk about causation and the last thing

you need of course is damages, what attorneys calls damages or harms or losses. So if a doctor

fails to diagnose something and that prolongs or worsen the problem or causes death or loss of

limb and it directly causes that then you have a duty–a physician-patient relationship, a breach-

failure to diagnose, causation -the failure to diagnose, cause the problem to become worse and

then lastly, damages- caused the loss of life or caused loss of limb or serious prolonged

interruption in your normal affairs, pain, suffering, and loss of companionship when the patient

dies.

Those are the four things you need; I'll talk about how you go about proving your case in another

video but that's what you need to prove a medical malpractice case in the state of Utah.

Of course, we are happy to answer your questions, you can call us, email us, text us. – George Tait

Law.

Thanks for watching and please be careful out there.