Medical Malpractice and Reasonable Standard of Care

A veteran of the Iraq war and a graduate of Yale Law School, Jeffrey Douglas Kaliel has been appointed class counsel in a multitude of nationwide class actions and recovered hundreds of millions of dollars for his clients. In 2017, Jeffrey Douglas Kaliel founded Kaliel PLLC, a law firm offering a wide range of legal services, including medical malpractice representation.

Medical malpractice has a very broad definition, but in every circumstance it hinges on a reasonable standard of care and whether that standard of care was met. Put another way, in a medical malpractice case, injury lawyers try to prove that a defendant did not act in accordance with what’s expected of a “reasonable person.”

The difficulty in proving medical negligence is that doctors aren’t average people. They have specialized knowledge and therefore juries have trouble deciding if they acted reasonably. Even a medical expert without specialized knowledge of the defendant’s medical focus can’t accurately assess whether he or she acted reasonably.

As a result, medical malpractice cases often rely on experts in specific medical areas who can testify if the doctor acted in accordance with the expected behavior of someone in his or her position. Ultimately, a jury decides if the defendant acted reasonably, but medical experts can have a significant influence on the jury's decision.