Medical Malpractice

South Carolina Medical Malpractice Attorneys

Perhaps no area of the law is more widely misunderstood than the law of medical malpractice. If you place your trust and confidence in a physician, nurse, hospital or other healthcare provider who chooses to subject you to unsafe, unreasonable or substandard care, there is nothing unfair about expecting to be compensated for the loss of your health through their mistakes, carelessness or neglect. Yet in South Carolina and throughout the United States, we are repeatedly told that individual patients must sacrifice their right to fair medical malpractice compensation in order to make healthcare a more profitable industry for doctors, hospitals and insurance companies.

The notion that doctors are leaving South Carolina or stopping the practice of medicine altogether because of lawsuits is complete and utter nonsense. There are more doctors in South Carolina now than ever before. The truth of the matter is that powerful political organizations have teamed up with insurance companies and other monied interests to devise a clever way of blaming the innocent victims of poor medical care and their lawyers for the societal cost of a handful of people practicing bad medicine.

In 2005, the South Carolina General Assembly enacted a package of legislation specially designed to make it as difficult as possible for even meritorious medical malpractice claims to be successfully presented. Some of these new laws were so unreasonable that the South Carolina Supreme Court acted almost immediately to suspend their enforcement. Yet still surviving are arbitrary caps which have been placed on the amount of damages you can recover from a negligent medical care provider, no matter how great your actual losses are. A host of new procedural obstacles can also bring you to grief if you hire a lawyer who is not familiar with them. These new requirements include an affidavit of merit, pre-suit notice of intent to sue and pre-suit mediation. While not yet law, efforts are also underway to impose significant barriers to finding an expert witnesses. At Leventis & Ransom, we can advise you about the implications of these changes in the law for your claim.

We offer free initial consultations in medical malpractice cases

To get more information about how an experienced personal injury and wrongful death lawyer can help, e-mail us or call us at 803-765-2383.

We handle all medical malpractice cases on a contingency basis. That means you are not expected to make any payment unless we obtain compensation for your medical bills, pain and suffering, lost wages and other damages. In some cases, however, the client must first assume the cost of obtaining medical records and having them reviewed by a qualified physician in order to obtain the required affidavit of merit.

We are available to help people in Columbia and throughout South Carolina with all types of medical malpractice cases, including those based on:

Birth injuries (cerebral palsy, Erb's palsy, shoulder dystocia)
Failures to diagnose (failure to diagnose cancer, failure to diagnose heart attack)
Misdiagnosis (misdiagnosis of stroke, misdiagnosis of cardiac arrest)
Surgical mistakes (wrong site surgery, failure to remove surgical instruments)
Anesthesia mistakes
Medication errors (overmedication, failure to administer the correct medication, failure to predict drug interactions, prescribing drugs for non-FDA approved uses)
Emergency room errors
Charting errors
Misplaced or lost medical records
Failure to obtain or review test results
Improper diagnosis or treatment of post-operative infections

Medical malpractice cases are complex. We have the experience necessary to build a strong legal strategy designed to achieve full and fair compensation. Part of that strategy is to enlist an experienced medical expert from the very start. We will set up a confidential review of your medical care to determine the proper standards were followed. The expert will work to determine exactly how the malpractice caused or contributed to your condition. Furthermore, the expert will be able to present this information in front of a judge and jury if necessary.

Help is just a phone call away

E-mail us or call us at 803-765-2383 for a free initial consultation with a trusted medical malpractice lawyer.