Generally, you can sue a hospital for emotional distress if you suffered physical harm due to medical malpractice. When accompanied by life-altering physical injuries, emotional distress gives you grounds for a medical malpractice claim against your caregiver, the hospital, or both
By filing an insurance claim or personal injury lawsuit, you can legally hold a negligent hospital and healthcare provider accountable for their mistakes. You could be entitled to damages like medical costs and emotional distress that resulted from the medical error.
- Assessing the Impact of Emotional Distress on Daily Life
- Do I Have a Case for Hospital Medical Malpractice?
- Who Has Grounds for a Medical Malpractice Claim or Lawsuit?
- How do You Prove You Have Emotional Distress and Prove the Hospital’s Liability?
- How Much Can You Sue for Emotional Distress in New York?
- How Long do I Have to Sue a Hospital for Negligence in New York?
- About Our Hospital Malpractice Lawyers in New York
- Suing a Hospital for Emotional Distress
Assessing the Impact of Emotional Distress on Daily Life
When pursuing a claim for emotional distress against a hospital, it’s important to evaluate how the distress affects your daily life. This includes the severity of the psychological trauma and its impact on your ability to function normally, such as difficulty maintaining relationships, working, or performing everyday tasks.
Thorough documentation from mental health professionals can substantiate the extent of your distress. Understanding these impacts helps in determining the compensation you may be entitled to, ensuring a comprehensive approach to your emotional recovery.
For a free legal consultation, call (516) 932-0400
Do I Have a Case for Hospital Medical Malpractice?
When a person suffers medical malpractice, their entire life can be turned upside down. In addition to debilitating physical injuries, the emotional trauma you endured upon learning that your healthcare provider made a medical mistake could be enough to send you into a deep depression, give you severe anxiety, and make it difficult for you to live your life normally.
When medical malpractice leads to physical harm, you may have grounds for legal action against your healthcare provider and those responsible for the medical mistake. As part of your legal action, you have the right to pursue damages for emotional harm as well.
Your New York personal injury lawyer will need to discuss what you went through and how your life has been affected by physical and emotional trauma. This will help your attorney determine whether you have grounds for a medical malpractice claim or lawsuit and how much your case is worth.
A Case for Malpractice Leading to Loss of Life
If medical malpractice led to the loss of a loved one, your family must be experiencing a great deal of emotional distress and a number of other damages. Our firm would be privileged to take your case on for you and file a wrongful death claim or lawsuit on behalf of your family.
Who Has Grounds for a Medical Malpractice Claim or Lawsuit?
Hospitals may be held accountable for medical malpractice if they hire physicians and other healthcare providers who provide poor medical care to a patient. However, if a hospital hires a caregiver as an independent contractor and this contractor provides poor medical care, the hospital may not be liable for the actions of the caregiver.
In order to move forward with a medical malpractice claim or suit for emotional distress, your attorney will need to prove that the doctor, nurse, or medical facility breached their duty of care.
If a doctor or nurse made a mistake that another healthcare provider of similar job training, education, and experience would not have made, this could be considered a breach of the duty of care.
Your attorney will need to prove all of the elements of negligence in your case, as follows:
- Duty of care
- Breach of duty
- Causation
- Damages
The breach in the duty of care must have caused you damages that had a substantial impact on your life.
This does not mean you must have suffered critical or life-threatening injuries. Rather, as long as the healthcare provider’s or facility’s mistake caused considerable physical trauma, you may have grounds for a medical malpractice claim or suit that includes compensation for emotional distress.
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How do You Prove You Have Emotional Distress and Prove the Hospital’s Liability?
In medical malpractice claims/suits and other personal injury claims/suits, liability must be proven based on a preponderance of the evidence. This is different from criminal court, where guilt must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
More specifically, the “preponderance” standard that must be met requires that your attorney introduce evidence showing it is more likely than not that the at-fault party caused the physical injuries and emotional distress that have impacted your life.
Some of the more common types of evidence that could be used to prove liability and emotional distress in a medical malpractice claim/suit for emotional distress include:
- Medical records
- Witness statements
- Expert testimony
- Forensic evidence
- Communication exchanges
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How Much Can You Sue for Emotional Distress in New York?
Emotional distress can have a devastating impact on your life. You may find it difficult to continue supporting yourself and your family while you cope with what you have been through.
Fortunately, you have the opportunity to find a sense of justice and even a sense of closure after a healthcare provider’s negligence or misconduct causes you to suffer physical and emotional injuries.
Your attorney will need to closely evaluate the ways in which your life has been affected by your emotional distress so they are able to calculate the value of your claim.
You have the right to recover both economic and non-economic damages. Some of the losses claimants seek include:
- Physical pain and suffering
- Emotional trauma
- Costs of mental health counseling
- Other medical expenses
- Loss of income
- Diminished earning capacity
- Diminished quality of life
- Loss of consortium
You can get a better idea of how much your claim or suit for emotional distress is worth when you contact an experienced medical malpractice attorney to discuss the circumstances of your case.
How Long do I Have to Sue a Hospital for Negligence in New York?
Generally, a claimant has two years and six months from the date of the incident to file a medical malpractice lawsuit against a hospital in New York. Our firm will discuss this with you in more detail, and if you’d like to file a suit, we’ll also ensure we meet the deadline for you.
About Our Hospital Malpractice Lawyers in New York
For more than 30 years, our legal team of medical malpractice attorneys and other personal injury attorneys has been resolving cases for many clients like you in situations like yours. To date, our team has recovered over $250,000,000 for clients, so they’ve also been very successful. A member of this team will do everything necessary to recover your due compensation, as well, even if it means suing your hospital.
We’ll go the extra mile for you, literally. We’ll meet with you in person anywhere in the New York metropolitan area to discuss your case in detail with you.
Suing a Hospital for Emotional Distress
If you have suffered psychological distress or emotional trauma as a result of physical injuries caused by medical malpractice, you may have grounds for a claim or lawsuit against the hospital.
You can find out more about what legal options may be available to you when you contact a New York medical malpractice lawyer at Friedman & Simon, L.L.P. Access your no-cost, risk-free consultation as soon as today. A dedicated team member is standing by to discuss the details of your case.
Call or text (516) 932-0400 or complete a Free Case Evaluation form