Who To Sue After Medical Malpractice Harms You

When you are receiving medical care and treatment, you will have many different healthcare providers working for you. This is particularly true in emergency situations or during surgeries, as many hospitals have a significant number of healthcare staff that are both employed and are contracted to work there. These providers all come in and come out of your room and after treating you, and you may not know what they are doing and whether they have been treating you or not. There are even providers who are performing tests and tasks for your care and you will never know who they are or even that they are working to help treat you!

This begs the question, if you have been injured in a medical malpractice case due to your care and treatment, who do you sue?

Everyone!

That make seem aggressive, but is is necessary to protect your rights to compensation. That is because New York law has a two and a half year statute of limitations for all medical malpractice lawsuits. There are some extensions which toll, or stop that statute of limitations running, but the best practices would not be to rely on those tolls. This means that a victim of medical malpractice must commence his or her case against all possible defendants before the time expires to do so.

If a victim only sues the main culprits, and it turns out later that other parties were liable, those defendants will not be liable. This could actually cause the victim to lose this or her case if the main defendant is left out of the lawsuit and the statute of limitations has expired.

Further, it is important to sue all possible parties because you do not know who does what with your healthcare planning! You are a patient and not a medical professional; you aren’t expected to know everything that is going on regarding your care and treatment. Let your lawyer and the court help determine who was liable for your injuries.