How To File A Medical Malpractice Lawsuit in Manhattan in 5 Easy Steps

When a doctor, nurse, or medical worker does the poor treatment of a patient, due to which the patient gets injured, then it is called medical malpractice. The person with this inappropriate treatment should know that he can sue those doctors, nurses, etc. 

If you or your loved one has faced medical malpractice, then you can file a claim to compensate him. It’s advisable to hire an experienced New York City injury attorney to file a lawsuit. Below you can learn how you can file step by step medical malpractice lawsuits.

How To File A Medical Malpractice Lawsuit

If you are thinking of filing a medical malpractice case on a doctor or health care provider, then you have to take care of some important steps which are unique in such claims. So let’s know-

1) Prepare the Required Documents

To file your lawsuit, you have to sign some legal documents for which you should meet your attorney. Your legal documents include the complaint, summons, and merit certificate.

• The primary document you need is the complaint that tells you have suffered injuries due to inappropriate treatment and you want to make the doctor responsible. In this document, you will also tell how much compensation you want to claim for your medical negligence. When you file this complaint in court, then every defendant will get a copy of the complaint.
• Next, the court sends summons to the defendants they have been sued. In this document, the defendant’s name, address, and the name of the state where the case has been filed in the court, etc., are written.
• You also have to obtain a certificate of merit that tells you whether the particular doctor or medical professional checked your health records and the claims you filed are merits.

Preparing the documents on your own can be difficult, so you should hire a personal injury lawyer with experience in medical malpractice. 

2) File the Documents to the Court’s Clerk

The next step is to file the signed documents to the clerk of the concerned court. This can be the court in which you live or in which you were injured. Along with this, you also have to pay court filing fees to the clerk’s office. 

3) Serve the Summon

Now you have to send a document to call the defendant. For this, most of the plaintiffs hire a process server for serving the summons. It can be anyone above 18 years of age. The fee for this process server depends on the number of summons needed to be served to several defendants. You can sever in three different ways –

• Personal Service – The process server directly serves the complaints and summons to the defendants.
• Substituted delivery – In this, the process server does not go directly to the defendant and gives it to another person at the defendant’s address. In this case, a follow-up mail is also sent to the defendants.
• Conspicuous delivery – In this method, the process server doesn’t hand over the complaints and summons to anyone rather leaves them in a conspicuous place at the defendant’s address. In this case, also the defendants get a mail copy of the complaints and summons.

4) Affidavit of Service

After serving the complaints and summons to the defendants, the process server needs to sign an affidavit of service ensuring that he/she served the documents to the defendants. 

5) You Need to Wait for the Response from Defendants

The defendants need to respond to the lawsuit within 30 days after they have been served the documents. The lawsuit can proceed after the defendants respond to the lawsuit. However, if the defendants do not file their response within 30 days, then the court assumes that all the charges levied on them are true, and the defendants admit all the charges.

Final Thoughts

So you saw how you can file step by step medical malpractice lawsuits. Medical malpractice is an injury that is increasing day by day, so you should not hesitate to file a case. By filing your case, irresponsible doctors will be removed so that no one else’s life will be endangered.