How the Statute of Limitations Applies
(Broward County, FL) – April 6th,
2016 – In most states, medical malpractice lawsuits and literally all other
types of civil lawsuits are subject to the statute of limitations. So what is
the statute of limitations and how can it affect your medical malpractice
lawsuit? According to Broward County, FL medical malpractice lawyers, the statute
of limitations is a deadline within which hospital neglect or medical
malpractice lawsuits can be filed in order to claim compensation.
No petition for a lawsuit will be
accepted after the statute of limitations has expired. This period that we talk
about is not necessarily a fixed amount of time across the nation since
different states have different state laws and the period of validity of the
statute of limitations may vary. In some states it is one year while in states
like Florida the statute is two years from when the injury was discovered.
Discovered, not when it actually occurred.
More on this very soon.
How does the rule of discovery apply to
the statute of limitations?
According to Florida medical malpractice
attorneys, when the statute of limitations rule was applied to medical
malpractice lawsuits, it did not take too long before legislators and the
judicial system discovered that in some cases the statute of limitations was
unfairly making some victims’ medical malpractice claims invalid. Originally,
the statute of limitations law ruled that the clock would start ticking down
from the time or moment when the medical malpractice itself had transpired.
So for example, if a surgery was
negligently botched up on January 1st of 2016, and the state of
jurisdiction stipulated that the time period of validity of the statute of
limitations was three years, then the victim has until January 1st
of 2019 to file the nursing home abuse or medical malpractice
lawsuit failing which his or her medical malpractice claim will be dismissed.
However, the statute of limitations
failed to consider the fact that in some cases patients would not be aware that
medical malpractice occurred until sometime later (many years later in some
cases) when symptoms show up and they get it checked out by another doctor only
to realize that they were victims of medical malpractice a year ago or 22 months
ago, for example. In many such cases, the discovery that medical malpractice
had occurred may itself happen long after the statute of limitations has
expired, and so it is unfair to subject such cases to the statute of
limitations per se.
In remedy, this is where the rule of
discovery comes into play. For the most part, the rule of discovery has been
employed by most states to accommodate such cases where victims are unaware of
the medical malpractice until much later after it actually occurred.
Therefore, as per Broward County, FL
medical malpractice lawyers, in such cases, the rule of discovery dictates that
the clock for the statute of limitations should start ticking down only when
the victim discovers that the malpractice or hospital neglect has occurred or
should have reasonably discovered that medical malpractice had taken place.
If you miss this date, there is no going
back. There is no hopping into Marty McFly’s or Dr. Emmett Brown’s DeLorean and
going back in time a few days or a few months for example so you can file the lawsuit
on time. That is just not going to work, it does not matter if you go 80 mph
all day long and you have the date, place, and time set right! Not going to
happen!
Get Yourself a Medical Malpractice
Lawyer Today
If you happen to be a victim of medical malpractice,
you need to understand that the laws dealing with malpractice and the
consequent litigation are vast and can be overwhelming. If you want to stand a
fighting chance of actually winning your malpractice or hospital neglect claim
and the damages that you rightfully deserve, then you should waste no time in
consulting a Florida medical malpractice lawyer.
You may have thought that that DeLorean
was cool in those movies (the second one was not that impressive though) but it
is nowhere near as cool as this website: Medical-Malpractice.USAttorneys. This website is
real and it can save multiple lives at once and help out a variety of people
which it already has. If you need legal assistance for a medical malpractice
circumstance, the tool to utilize has just been presented to you (more than once in fact). Contact us if you have any questions.
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