A South Carolina medical malpractice attorney describes why these cases cost so much, how a victim or their family can afford it, and why you shouldn't give up if you think you've suffered from substandard care.
Transcript
We're talking about why malpractice cases call so much in south carolina. The answer is we have to hire experts. Experts or other doctors or nurses, they won't come from south carolina because generally providers here are not going to testify against each. Other good experts are very expensive. They get paid based on the time they invest in your case and their time is extremely valuable and sometimes we need more than one. Most folks don't have enough money to pay for experts so your malpractice lawyer pays the fees for you, then gets reimbursed out of your settlement or verdict if you go to trial.
Here is a brief and general overview of what an expert does to help your medical malpractice case. First, the expert reviews your medical records to see if you even have a case. We can't file a medical malpractice case without an expert sworn statement telling why we have a case. If we bring the case the expert reviews all the evidence that's related to the expert's testimony. For example, in the discovery process we get evidence from the other side. The expert will analyze that evidence just like us to see what defenses the other side may use from it and to tell us what we can do to make your case stronger as a result of it. Next, your expert gives a deposition. That's out of court sworn testimony responding to questions asked by the other side. It's sort of a preview of trial testimony to give a good deposition the experts got to prepare and then of course invest the time required to give the deposition itself. Don't worry we take the other side's expert depositions as well. Next, the expert prepares for trial if the case doesn't settle. That requires an investment of a lot of time reviewing all the evidence and deposition from the case and getting ready for his trial testimony. When out of state experts travel to testify here for trial, that's when expenses really stretch.
But don't let all these expenses scare you off or discourage you from getting legal answers to your questions about whether you got harmed as a result of a medical mistake. If you think you did, or you lost a loved one as a result of one, you should consult with a qualified medical malpractice lawyer to see what your rights are and to determine whether it's worth it to try to get an expert to see if you've got a case worth bringing.
We have a select medical malpractice case flow. To see if you qualify to be one of our clients or just find out more about your rights check out other articles on our website or start an email or live chat right where you are. I thank you for thinking about this with me and I hope I see you soon.
