Medical Malpractice Attorney Orange County

Medical malpractice is a serious issue that can have devastating consequences for the patient, their family, and their loved ones. Because of this, you need to understand what medical malpractice is and how it can affect you.

Malpractice occurs when a doctor or other member of the healthcare team makes an error that causes injury or death to their patient. Recovery is difficult, but your medical malpractice attorney in Orange County can help you get a fair settlement. The lawyers at Kohan & Bablove Injury Attorneys have the tools and expertise to assist you if you have been injured.

Why Choose Kohan & Bablove Injury Attorneys for Your Medical Malpractice Claim?

When your trust in a medical provider is broken, selecting the right legal team is paramount. At Kohan & Bablove Injury Attorneys, we have a proven record of holding negligent medical professionals accountable, securing the justice and compensation victims deserve. We believe everyone deserves expert representation, which is why our guarantee means you pay no fees unless we win your case. Our attorneys bring decades of combined experience to your side, providing a deep understanding of the complex legal and medical issues involved in these challenging cases. The powerful testimonials detailing what our past clients say highlight our commitment not just to winning, but to providing compassionate support during a difficult time. Choose a firm with the experience and dedication to fight for you.

What is Medical Malpractice?

Medical malpractice is a specific type of negligent behavior committed by medical professionals such as doctors, nurses, hospitals, nursing homes, or other healthcare institutions. It occurs when a professional provides treatment that falls below the accepted “standard of care,” and this failure causes a patient to suffer a new or worsened injury. It is important to understand that an undesirable medical outcome is not automatically malpractice. The key is proving that the harm was a direct result of a healthcare provider’s preventable mistake—a mistake that a reasonably skilled and competent professional in the same field would not have made under similar circumstances.

Proving a Breach in the Standard of Care

The “standard of care” is the central concept in any medical malpractice claim. It is the level and type of care that a reasonably prudent healthcare professional, with a similar background and in the same medical community, would have provided to a patient in a similar situation. Proving that this standard was breached is the most challenging part of a malpractice case. It cannot be based on a patient’s opinion alone. Instead, it requires extensive review of medical records and, crucially, testimony from qualified medical experts who can explain to a judge and jury what the standard of care was and how the defendant-doctor deviated from it, causing harm.

Common Types of Medical Malpractice Cases We Handle

Medical negligence can occur in any healthcare setting and take many forms. At Kohan & Bablove Injury Attorneys, our experience covers a wide range of these tragic cases, including:

• Misdiagnosis or Delayed Diagnosis: Negligence that can result in incorrect treatment or a failure to diagnose a serious condition like cancer or heart disease in a timely manner. This often happens when a professional misinterprets test results, rushes through an appointment, or dismisses a patient’s symptoms, leading to a worse prognosis.
  
  
• Surgical Errors: These devastating mistakes can occur when a doctor inadvertently injures surrounding tissue because they are rushing, performs surgery on the wrong body part, leaves surgical equipment inside a patient, or makes errors during anesthesia.
  
  
• Birth Injuries: These often result when complications during labor and delivery are addressed incorrectly or not quickly enough. This negligence can cause lifelong consequences for the child, including conditions such as cerebral palsy, Erb’s palsy, brain damage, and Spinal cord injuries.
  
  
• Medication Errors: These can include underdosing, overdosing, prescribing or administering the wrong drug, providing an incorrect dosage, or failing to account for a patient’s medical history and known allergies. These errors can result in serious injury and sometimes even death.
  
  
• Emergency Room Errors: Failing to properly triage, diagnose, or promptly treat a patient’s critical condition in an emergency setting.
  
  

Identifying All Liable Parties (Doctors, Hospitals, Staff)

The negligent act of a single doctor may not be the only source of liability. A thorough investigation often reveals that multiple parties can be held responsible. Liable parties may include the individual doctor or surgeon, the hospital or medical facility for issues like inadequate staffing, faulty equipment, or negligent hiring, as well as nurses, anesthesiologists, pharmacists, and other medical staff. Identifying every at-fault party is essential to ensure our clients receive the full and fair compensation they deserve.

How We Investigate and Build a Strong Medical Malpractice Case

A medical malpractice claim is one of the most complex and challenging areas of personal injury law. Winning requires far more than just believing a doctor made a mistake. It demands a meticulous, evidence-based strategy, a deep understanding of both legal and medical principles, and the resources to stand up to the formidable legal teams representing hospitals and their insurers. At Kohan & Bablove Injury Attorneys, we have a proven process for investigating and building a powerful case designed to secure the justice and compensation our clients deserve.

Conducting a Thorough Medical Record Review

The foundation of every medical malpractice case is the patient’s complete medical history. The first and most critical step is obtaining every relevant record. This process goes far beyond a single hospital chart and includes:

• Physician’s notes
  
  
• Nursing logs
  
  
• Diagnostic test results (MRIs, CT scans, lab work)
  
  
• Medication administration records
  
  
• Surgical reports
  
  
• Anesthesiology records
  
  
• Consultation notes from every provider involved in your care
  
  

Our legal team carefully reviews thousands of pages of these documents, identifying inconsistencies, omissions, altered records, and key evidence showing a deviation from the standard of care. This detailed analysis allows us to reconstruct the exact timeline of events and pinpoint where the medical error occurred.

Consulting with Respected Medical Experts to Establish Negligence

Under California law, a patient’s claim of negligence alone is insufficient. The case must be supported by the opinion of a qualified medical professional. This is critical in building a strong case. We utilize our extensive network of respected medical experts—including board-certified surgeons, specialists, nurses, and pharmacologists—who review your records and provide professional opinions on whether the standard of care was breached. Their expert testimony is vital for explaining complex medical concepts to a jury, establishing negligence, and linking it directly to the harm you suffered.

Calculating the Full Lifetime Cost of Your Injuries

Damages in medical malpractice cases are often catastrophic and lifelong. Our calculation of damages extends far beyond past medical bills. We collaborate with financial planners, life care planners, and vocational experts to project the full long-term cost of your injuries. This includes:

• Future surgeries and ongoing therapy
  
  
• Necessary home modifications and in-home nursing care
  
  
• All anticipated medical needs for the rest of your life
  
  
• Total lost income, including loss of future earning capacity
  
  

This comprehensive approach ensures the compensation we pursue fully protects your financial future and covers all the losses caused by medical negligence.

Anticipating and Overcoming Common Defense Tactics

Hospitals, doctors, and their powerful insurance carriers employ experienced defense attorneys who often follow a predictable playbook to deny responsibility and minimize claims. A successful medical malpractice firm must not only react to these strategies but anticipate them from the outset. By understanding the defense’s likely tactics, we proactively build a stronger, more resilient case designed to withstand their challenges.

Arguing the Injury Was a Known and Unavoidable Complication

A frequent defense argument is that the patient’s injury resulted from a known and accepted risk of the procedure, rather than negligence. Defendants often point to the informed consent form you signed, listing potential complications, claiming that you accepted this risk. However, signing a consent form does not excuse negligence. Our attorneys differentiate between unavoidable complications and preventable errors, using expert medical testimony to show that while a risk may be known, your injury occurred due to the provider’s deviation from the accepted standard of care.

Blaming the Patient’s Pre-Existing Condition or Lifestyle

If the defense cannot deny the injury, they often attempt to shift blame onto the patient, citing pre-existing conditions (e.g., diabetes, heart disease) or lifestyle choices (e.g., smoking, failure to follow post-op instructions). This “blame the victim” tactic is countered by clearly establishing causation. Our medical experts demonstrate how the provider’s negligence was a substantial factor in causing a new injury or significantly worsening an existing condition, independent of other health factors.

Using Delay Tactics to Pressure You into a Low Settlement

Defense teams are aware that injured patients face significant financial and emotional stress. They exploit this by prolonging the legal process—filing repeated motions, making burdensome discovery requests, and delaying depositions—to pressure victims into accepting low settlements. At Kohan & Bablove Injury Attorneys, we have the resources, experience, and resolve to counter these tactics. We are prepared for a thorough legal fight and will not settle for anything less than the full and fair value of your claim.

Compensation for Malpractice Victims

A successful medical malpractice claim seeks to secure a financial recovery that fully accounts for the lifetime of harm caused by a healthcare professional’s negligence. The goal is to obtain compensation that covers past and present losses while also providing for future needs, ensuring your financial stability and overall quality of life. Understanding the types of damages available is a critical step in this process.

Economic Damages (Medical Bills, Lost Wages, Future Care)

Economic damages are the tangible, quantifiable financial losses resulting directly from the malpractice. In California, these damages are not capped and form the foundation of your financial recovery. A thorough claim includes a detailed accounting of:

• Past and Future Medical Bills: This covers corrective surgeries, hospital stays, doctor visits, medications, physical therapy, and any other treatment you have received or will need for the rest of your life.
  
  
• Lost Wages and Earning Capacity: Compensation includes both income lost during recovery and damages for reduced future earning potential if your ability to work is permanently impacted.
  
  
• Other Costs: Expenses such as in-home nursing care, assistive devices, and necessary home modifications are also recoverable.
  
  

Non-Economic Damages (Pain and Suffering Caps in California)

Non-economic damages compensate for the intangible human costs of malpractice, including physical pain and emotional suffering, disfigurement, and loss of enjoyment of life. California law imposes a cap on these damages in medical malpractice cases—currently $390,000 as of 2024, with annual increases. Wrongful death cases have higher caps for non-economic damages. While these caps are significant, experienced attorneys at Kohan & Bablove Injury Attorneys focus on maximizing all categories of compensation, particularly uncapped economic damages, to ensure clients receive the most comprehensive financial recovery possible.

Strict Malpractice Laws in California

California has some of the strictest standards for proving medical malpractice in the country, so without a lawyer experienced in medical malpractice by your side, it’s hard to know where you stand.

Your lawyer can review the details of your claim and ensure you’re following the laws that can impact your claim. Laws like negligence, time limits, and damage caps can hurt your claim if not followed carefully, so talk to an attorney for guidance. 

Proving Negligence

In California, medical malpractice claims are usually not allowed unless there was demonstrable negligence on the part of the defendant. This means that if your doctor was following typical standards of practice in medicine, they won’t be held liable for any damages that result from their actions. 

In some cases, they may still be guilty of gross negligence. If so, they could be held liable even if they were following standards of medical care. Your medical malpractice lawyer in Orange County can review the details of your injury or illness and determine whether you’re eligible for a lawsuit. 

Negligence can be broken down into four sections: duty of care, breach of duty of care, causation, and damages. To have a case, you must prove that negligence played a factor. For negligence to be proven, all four sections must be present.

Duty of care is a legal responsibility that every medical professional has to treat a patient who has requested their services to the best of their ability. Doctors have a specific oath regarding their duty of care, known as the Hippocratic oath. That is to say, every medical professional is aware of the responsibility they shoulder.

Let’s say that a patient arrives at the hospital complaining of severe pain in the abdomen. The patient is a woman of color and is clearly distressed. It falls under a doctor’s duty of care to run a battery of tests to determine the cause of the woman’s pain and distress and to do the best they can to alleviate her suffering in the meantime.

If the doctor who sees this patient instead dismisses her, telling her that her pain is likely due to menstrual cramps, that doctor is breaching their duty of care. The doctor has failed to take responsibility for addressing the woman’s condition properly, instead making an unfounded guess to get her out of the emergency room without seeing her.

Causation is the harm that results from the doctor’s breach of duty of care. In this case, the woman has been turned away by the doctor and has been sent home to continue suffering without answers or relief.

Damages are used to describe the results of the doctor’s negligent behavior. In our example, the damages could be permanent disability from untreated appendicitis in the patient, or even death, if she did not feel safe enough to seek a second opinion after being dismissed by the doctor the first time.

Types of Negligence

There are three primary categories of negligence in medical malpractice cases. These include gross negligence, comparative negligence, and vicarious liability. The strongest medical malpractice cases result from gross negligence, but any form of negligence is a basis for filing a medical malpractice case in Orange County.

Gross negligence is the most severe form of negligence. Extreme recklessness or disregard for human life falls under gross negligence. Gross negligence in the medical field will likely be apparent to someone without any medical training whatsoever. An example of gross negligence is administering a drug to a patient that their chart clearly states they are allergic to, resulting in injury or death to the patient.

Comparative negligence occurs when the patient is partially responsible for the damage to their own body. Failing to follow your doctor’s directions after receiving care and harming yourself, as a result, can find you comparatively negligent. Another example of comparative negligence is failing to disclose one of your medications when you seek treatment, which can cause your healthcare professional to administer a medication that interacts poorly with your medication.

Vicarious liability occurs when the person who technically did the damage is not fully responsible. Vicarious liability in medical malpractice can look like a doctor leaving an unsupervised medical student to care for a patient. If the medical student makes an error that harms the patient but had the doctor’s permission to do so, the doctor can be held vicariously liable.

Limits on Medical Malpractice Damages

California has a limit on non-economic damages in cases against health care providers. In 2022, the California Legislature and the Governor signed AB 35 into law which increased the damage caps on medical malpractice cases. Specifically, the noneconomic damage cap — beginning with claims filed January 1, 2023 – will be adjusted annually as follows:

• $500,000 for wrongful death claims resolved in 2023, increasing $50,000 per annum for 10 years and then 2.0% per annum thereafter;
• $350,000 for other claims resolved in 2023, increasing $40,000 per annum for 10 years and then 2.0% per annum thereafter;
• Potential for the cap to apply (i.e., “stack”) up to three times depending on negligence of:
  • Healthcare providers
  • Healthcare institutions
  • The separate negligence of providers or institutions unaffiliated with those held negligent in items 1) and 2) above, and occurring at separate institutions.

Statute of Limitations

California has specific rules regarding when you can file a medical malpractice claim. For example, if you want to file a medical malpractice lawsuit against a doctor or hospital, you must file one year from the date you should have known about the injury or three years from the actual date of the injury (whichever is earlier). 

This means if you want to collect for any injuries or damages that happened outside of those timeframes, your case may be dismissed immediately as being time-barred. Meet with medical malpractice attorney Orange County as soon as possible after you are hurt.

Pure Comparative Negligence Laws

California law allows people who were injured by a doctor’s mistake to recover damages for their injuries even if they were partly responsible for the mistake. If you do accept partial fault, you will only collect a fraction of those damages.

This means if your doctor makes an error in diagnosis or treatment that causes you harm, California courts will still hold them responsible for their actions. However, if it can be proven that you contributed to the error in some way, then your recovery may be reduced by the percentage of fault attributed to you.

Contact a Medical Malpractice Attorney in Orange County

If you believe you or a loved one has been harmed due to medical negligence, it’s crucial not to delay in seeking justice. Schedule your free, confidential consultation with the experienced attorneys at Kohan & Bablove Injury Attorneys. We will listen to your story with compassion, answer your questions, and explain how we can help you begin your claim. Our team handles the complex investigation and aggressively advocates against powerful insurance companies on your behalf, allowing you to focus on your recovery. Contact our Orange County office today to take the first step toward securing the compensation and accountability you deserve. Reach out for a free consultation from our team. Call us at 949.506.4511 or fill out the form on our website for guidance with your case.