Stuart Catastrophic Medical Malpractice Lawyers
When someone in your family leaves a Stuart hospital or clinic with permanent brain damage, a spinal cord injury, or does not leave at all, you are asked to make decisions about a lawsuit at the worst possible time. Nothing about the next step requires you to decide today whether to sue anyone.
A catastrophic malpractice case starts with a physician in the right specialty reading the complete record and putting an opinion in writing, because Florida does not permit a lawsuit to begin without one. Firm partner, Michael V. Baxter spent 16 years on the defense side of malpractice litigation before he began representing patients, so he knows how a hospital and its carrier build a defense, and where those defenses fail. Eileen Bajak, our nurse paralegal, reads the same record as a registered nurse with 15 years in a neonatal intensive care unit behind her. We advance the cost of that review, and of the years of expert work behind a catastrophic case, so your family never funds it.
Are you dealing with a Catastrophic Injury?
Medical Errors That Lead to Catastrophic Injury and Wrongful Death Cases
Catastrophic describes harm that never resolves, where a person needs help breathing, eating, moving, or thinking for the rest of a life that was expected to continue normally. Five settings account for a good number of the catastrophic cases we review out of Stuart and Martin County.
Emergency and Inpatient Care
- Chest pain, stroke symptoms, or an aortic tear sent home with a diagnosis the recorded blood pressure and heart rate did not support
- Sepsis treated as dehydration or a urinary infection while the numbers went the other direction
- A patient declining overnight, with nursing notes recording the change and no physician called to the bedside
- A transfer to a receiving hospital where the reason for the transfer never reached the accepting team
Surgery and Anesthesia
- Damage to a nerve, vessel, or organ outside the operative field
- Bleeding after an operation that continued unrecognized through recovery
- Airway or sedation management that left permanent brain injury
- A sponge, clamp, forceps, or surgical needle left inside a patient
Diagnosis, Imaging, and Follow-Up
- A scan or a biopsy slide read incorrectly by a radiologist or pathologist who may be reading from another state
- Abnormal results that returned into a records system and reached no treating physician
- Cancer or infection that advanced while a referral went unscheduled
Medication and Pharmacy Errors
- The wrong drug, the wrong dose, or the right drug delivered by the wrong route
- An anticoagulant continued before a procedure, or never restarted afterward
- A recorded allergy or a known drug interaction overridden anyway
- A pharmacy dispensing the wrong strength or the wrong medication entirely
- An infusion pump programmed at a rate the order did not call for
Labor and Delivery
Brain or spinal cord injury from oxygen deprivation or mechanical trauma during labor, delivery, or resuscitation immediately after birth needs a separate analysis, because Florida routes qualifying births into a no-fault program that displaces a lawsuit against anyone directly involved in the delivery, subject to narrow exceptions (Fla. Stat. § 766.303(2)). Qualification depends on birth weight, on timing within labor and delivery, and on permanent and substantial mental and physical impairment, and the decision is reached by an administrative proceeding rather than by a jury (Fla. Stat. §§ 766.302(2) and 766.304).
Proof Florida Requires in a Medical Negligence Case
The Four Elements Behind Every Case
A malpractice case needs four elements:
- Duty: a provider-patient relationship existed, obligating the provider to meet the prevailing professional standard
- Breach: the care delivered fell below that standard
- Causation: the shortfall produced the injury, rather than the underlying condition producing it on its own
- Damages: the injury produced measurable losses, including medical expenses, lost earnings, and permanent physical harm
Causation is the element most heavily contested, because a patient sick enough to need the treatment gives the defense an argument that the outcome was inevitable, and answering it takes an expert willing to say what the result would have been under proper care.
Care Is Measured Against What Similar Providers Do
Florida places the burden on the injured patient to prove by the greater weight of the evidence that the care breached the prevailing professional standard, defined as the level of care, skill, and treatment recognized as acceptable by reasonably prudent similar health care providers (Fla. Stat. § 766.102(1)).
A devastating outcome by itself proves nothing, since the statute says that a medical injury creates no inference or presumption of negligence. A few narrow exceptions to that rule exist, along with defenses a provider can raise. Whether any of them apply to your care is a question an attorney can answer after reviewing the details of your case.
Who Can Testify About the Care
Only a licensed health care provider who has completed a review of the pertinent medical records may give standard-of-care testimony, and who the case is brought against decides which providers qualify (Fla. Stat. § 766.102(5)).
- Against a specialist, the expert practices the same specialty and devoted professional time to it during the three years before the treatment at issue, through clinical practice, consulting, teaching, or clinical research (Fla. Stat. § 766.102(5)(a))
- Against a physician providing emergency care in a hospital emergency department, the expert has substantial professional experience within the preceding five years while assigned to emergency medical services in a hospital emergency department (Fla. Stat. § 766.102(9))
- Against nurses, nurse practitioners, nurse anesthetists, nurse midwives, physician assistants, and other medical support staff, a physician who qualifies as an expert and knows the applicable standard from clinical practice or teaching may testify (Fla. Stat. § 766.102(6))
- No expert in a Florida medical negligence case may testify on a contingency fee basis (Fla. Stat. § 766.102(10))
Every requirement above reduces the number of physicians eligible to support a case, and the right one changes with the specialty and the setting. We work with reviewing physicians across the specialties a catastrophic case reaches, so the search starts from established relationships.
Parties Who Can Be Held Responsible
Families usually arrive naming one physician, but the reviewing expert’s opinion can widen that list, since catastrophic harm generally traces to several decisions rather than a single one.
- A hospital, surgery center, or clinic answers for its own conduct: how it staffed the unit, how it supervised, and whom it granted privileges to practice there
- Nurses, technicians, and therapists are facility employees, so their conduct is charged to the facility
- Anesthesia, emergency, radiology, and hospitalist groups contract with a facility rather than work for it, which makes each a separate party
- A radiologist or pathologist who interpreted the study may be working for a remote reading service in another state
- A dispensing pharmacy, the pharmacist behind the counter, or a clinical laboratory answers for what it sent out
A hospital also keeps internal reports when something goes wrong, and Florida’s Constitution gives patients access to them (Amendment 7). Reports about other patients harmed the same way are what turn a case against one provider into a case against the hospital for how it staffed, supervised, or granted privileges, and a hospital’s insurance coverage reaches much further than an individual physician’s.
Notice of intent has to go to each prospective defendant, and no lawsuit can begin for 90 days after that notice is delivered (Fla. Stat. § 766.106(2)(a) and (3)(a)), so identifying everyone during the investigation avoids repeating the wait for a party named later.
Florida's 90-Day Presuit Period
The notice of intent goes out with the records the reviewing physician relied on, a list of everyone who treated the patient in the two years before the care at issue and afterward, and a signed authorization releasing protected health information (Fla. Stat. §§ 766.106(2)(c) and 766.1065).
Your two-year deadline pauses for the full 90 days (Fla. Stat. § 766.106(4)). At or before day 90, the carrier answers one of three ways, and silence counts as the first:
- Rejection of the case
- A settlement offer
- An offer to arbitrate, with liability admitted and damages the only open question
Informal Discovery Runs in Both Directions
Presuit screening investigates your case as much as theirs, and Florida hands the defense investigative tools to use during the 90 days (Fla. Stat. § 766.106(6)):
- An unsworn statement from you, recorded or on video, usable only for presuit screening
- Written questions capped at 30, answered within 20 days
- One physical or mental examination by a health care provider the defense selects
- Interviews with the physicians treating the patient, which your attorney has 15 days to schedule, and which the defense may conduct without further notice when scheduling does not happen
Nothing produced during screening is discoverable or admissible in the lawsuit that follows (Fla. Stat. § 766.106(5)), and a party that refuses to cooperate can have its case or defenses struck (Fla. Stat. § 766.106(7)). Worked properly, those 90 days deliver the defense’s own expert opinion and a preview of its trial theory.
Deadlines for a Florida Medical Malpractice Case
Florida allows two years to bring a medical malpractice case, counted from the treatment that caused the harm or from the point the harm was discovered or reasonably should have been discovered (Fla. Stat. § 95.11(5)(c)). Discovery asks what a reasonable patient in your position would have known, and reassurance from a physician that the result fell within the accepted risks of the procedure is part of that analysis.
Variations and Exceptions to the 2-Year Timeline:
- Discovering the harm late does not extend the four-year period, which goes from the date of the treatment
- Fraud, concealment, or intentional misrepresentation that prevented discovery extends the period to two years from discovery, capped at seven years from the treatment
- A case brought for an injured child on or before the eighth birthday is not barred by the four-year or seven-year cutoff
- A death from medical negligence carries its own two-year period, counted from the date of death (Fla. Stat. § 95.11(5)(e))
Florida also allows an automatic 90-day extension of the two years, obtained without a hearing (Fla. Stat. § 766.104(2)). The extension has to be requested before the two years run out.
Pricing a Lifetime of Care
A jury awards only what somebody proved, and proving the cost of permanent disability means putting a number on decades that have not happened yet. Producing the number takes a life care plan, prepared by a rehabilitation nurse or physician who examines the patient, reads the treating records, and sets out the care required at each stage of the person’s remaining life.
Cost categories a plan commonly accounts for:
- Hours of in-home attendant care per day, and the point at which those hours become skilled nursing
- Procedures and therapy already recommended by the treating physicians, priced against published cost data for our area.
- Durable equipment, from a power chair to a patient lift to a communication device, each priced with its replacement interval
- Housing changes: ramps, widened doorways, a roll-in shower, and a van fitted with a lift
- Lost earning capacity for the patient, and for a parent or spouse who stopped working to provide the care
A contested case can put the plan in dispute, and the arguments we commonly see are a lower level of care is needed, an unpaid family member providing it, and a life expectancy shorter than the plan assumes. Support from a treating provider’s own record answers those arguments, so the plan is prepared alongside the medical case.
No Enforceable Cap Applies to Noneconomic Damages
Fla. Stat. § 766.118 still prints caps on noneconomic damages, and neither figure is enforceable today. Florida law once limited what a patient could recover for pain, suffering, and the loss of a normal life, and the Florida Supreme Court struck those limits down as unconstitutional.
Florida's Restriction on Recovery After a Death From Medical Care
Where medical negligence causes a death, an adult child of 25 or older recovers nothing for grief or lost companionship over a parent, and a parent recovers nothing for the loss of an adult child of 25 or older (Fla. Stat. § 768.21(8)). No other kind of death in Florida is treated that way.
The restriction only applies to compensation for grief and loss of companionship. Funeral costs, the medical bills from the final care, and the income and household help the person would have provided stay recoverable regardless of who survives.
Read more about Florida’s “Free Kill” law here.
Paying for a Case That Takes Years
Two costs exist in every malpractice case, and families usually hear about only one. Attorney’s fees are contingent, which means a percentage of a recovery, nothing without a recovery, no retainer, and no hourly billing at any point.
Case costs are the second, and in catastrophic litigation they are large. A physician bills hourly to review records that can be thousands of pages, bills again for a deposition, and bills again to testify. A life care planner, an economist, and frequently a second reviewing specialist each add their own invoices, and obtaining the records costs money before any of that begins. Lesser, Landy, Smith & Siegel carries those costs from the first records request through verdict, so a family already paying for care is never asked to fund the case that pays for it.
Contact Our Stuart Medical Malpractice Lawyers
A conversation costs nothing and commits you to nothing. Come with whatever documentation and details you already have and we will walk through what happened. If you have a case our catastrophic medical malpractice team will pursue the full compensation your family’s care and future require.
Reach our Stuart office at 772-283-6839, or send the details through the contact form.
Answers for Families Considering a Malpractice Case After a Catastrophic Loss
Does a Signed Consent Form End a Malpractice Case?
No. Consent covers the known risks of a procedure carried out in accordance with the prevailing professional standard, and Fla. Stat. § 766.102(2) says so directly. Care falling below the standard remains actionable regardless of what was signed beforehand.
Our Two Years Is Almost Up, So Is It Too Late?
Not necessarily. Fla. Stat. § 766.104(2) grants an automatic 90-day extension on petition to the clerk, and the deadline pauses again for the 90 days of presuit screening once notice of intent goes out. Both have to be used while time remains.
Do We Have to Release All of Our Medical Records?
Yes. Fla. Stat. § 766.1065 sets out an authorization form that accompanies the notice of intent, and it permits the defense to obtain records from providers who treated the patient and to interview the treating physicians. Your attorney schedules those interviews and attends them.
Does It Change Anything if the Hospital Is Government Run?
Yes, and it needs to be settled at the outset. Recovery against a government entity is capped at $200,000 per person under Fla. Stat. § 768.28, written notice to the agency is a condition precedent, and anything above the cap depends on an act of the Legislature. Private parties in the same case remain subject to no cap.
Does Florida Limit What a Jury Can Award?
No. Estate of McCall and North Broward Hospital District v. Kalitan removed the noneconomic damages caps, so a Martin County jury sets the figure and it stands.
Is There a Typical Timeline for a Catastrophic Case?
Obtaining records and locating a qualifying expert takes months, presuit screening adds 90 days, and a contested case can run years beyond that. No attorney can promise a date, and one who does is guessing.
Should We Bring Anything to the First Meeting?
Whatever identifies the care: hospital and clinic names, the physicians involved, discharge paperwork, and any written communication a risk manager or carrier has already sent you.
