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- Do I Have a Medical Malpractice Case?
- Types of Medical Malpractice Cases
- Choosing your lawyer and working with him effectively
- When Do I need a Lawyer for My Medical Malpractice Case?
- How Do I Choose My Lawyer?
- What Questions Do I Ask When Choosing a Lawyer?
- Meeting With Your Lawyer
- How Do Lawyers Determine the Value of My Case?
- How Do I Effectively Work With My Lawyer?
- What is the Attorney Client Privilege?
- What are the Ethical Rules for Lawyers?
- What is a Contingency Fee?
- When and How Do I Fire My Lawyer?
- Screening the case
- Recoverable Damages in Medical Malpractice Cases
- Fees and Costs in Medical Malpractice Cases
- The Legal Process
- Medical Review Panels
- Litigation, Trial and Appeal of Medical Malpractice Cases
- How Does My Case Proceed?
- What is Discovery
- What is Evidence?
- What Motions Are Filed in My Case?
- The Value and Settlement of My Case
- Will my Case Likely Settle?
- Do these Cases Often Settle?
- How Do Lawyers Determine the Value of My Case?
- Settlement Evaluations
- Physician's Consent to Settle the Case
- Reporting of Physician to National Databank
- How Do Insurance Adjusters Settle Cases?
- What is Mediation?
- How Do I Know If I Have a Good Settlement Offer?
- The Trial Of My Case
- How Does The Appeals Process Work?
- Does the Supreme Court Get to Hear My Case?
- Media & Press
- Verdicts and Settlements
- Contact Us

Are Small Damage Cases Worth Pursuing?
Louisiana law only allows victims of personal injuries, including medical malpractice victims, to recover compensatory damages, or damages designed to compensate a victim for their losses. This includes general damages like pain and suffering and mental anguish and special damages like medical expenses and lost wages.
Louisiana law only allows victims of personal injuries, including medical malpractice victims, to recover compensatory damages, or damages designed to compensate a victim for their losses. This includes general damages like pain and suffering and mental anguish and special damages like medical expenses and lost wages.
Louisiana does not allow victims to recover punitive damages, or damages designed to punish persons for their wrongful conduct in an attempt to deter that conduct in the future. Thus, the runaway verdicts seen in other jurisdictions rarely if ever occur here.Moreover, in medical malpractice cases, there is a cap on damages of $500,000 plus medical expenses.
Under Louisiana law, a victim of medical malpractice has the burden of proof in the case to demonstrate by a preponderance of the evidence that the defendant health care provider was negligent or "breached the standard of care." The law requires that in order to meet this burden of proof, a patient must prove their case with expert medical testimony by a physician who generally practices in the same specialty as the defendant doctor.
Hiring expert medical witnesses is a very expensive undertaking. Depending upon the type of case, medical experts can cost between $30,000 and $70,000 per case that goes to trial.
In order to justify spending this amount of money, a patient must have damages that make it economically feasible to proceed. There has to be enough provable damages to ensure that the patient will obtain a substantial recovery after paying the attorney's fee and expert fees.
Since most experienced medical malpractice attorneys rely upon their reputation to get cases, they will not jeopardize their business by taking a case where the attorney and expert are the only individuals who get paid.
In order to make a medical malpractice case worthwhile to pursue, the case should have approximately $125,000 to $150,000 in provable damages. Since Louisiana only allows the recovery of compensatory damages, a patient must have a serious and permanent injury to justify proceeding with a medical malpractice case.
A clear cut case where a foreign object is left in someone overnight without causing them any complications would not be worth pursuing if medical experts had to be retained. Therefore, unless the medical malpractice caused substantial damages, these cases are not worth pursuing.
Moreover, since physicians who pay any money in settlement get reported to a national data bank, which report follows them for the rest of their career, doctors do not settle these cases very often. Thus, the hope of a quick settlement can never be a motivating factor in a medical malpractice case in Louisiana.