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North Carolina Medical Malpractice Basics

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Healthcare is expensive, but your health is priceless. If you have been struggling to pay medical debts for years, you can at least console yourself that the medical treatment that wrecked your finances restored your health, and you are healthy enough to work to support your family and slowly chip away at your debt. What is worse is when medical treatment makes you sicker. Whether a routine medical procedure left you with a permanent disability or whether you recovered from the medical error but it caused you to require more treatment and therefore to incur more bills, you have the right to seek monetary damages if you have suffered medical malpractice. If a preventable medical error has left you with unaffordable medical bills, contact a Charlotte personal injury lawyer.

What is Medical Malpractice?

Medical malpractice is when a doctor makes a preventable error and causes a patient’s health to get worse. The error could be something as egregious as operating on the wrong body part or as subtle as not noticing a detail in the patient’s medical records that would influence the doctor’s decision about which drug to prescribe. If the error by a physician or other healthcare worker (such as a triage nurse who allowed a patient’s health to deteriorate in the emergency room waiting room while the doctors treated other patients) is the direct cause of the patient’s poor health outcome, it is medical malpractice. It is not always medical malpractice when a treatment does not work or when you get sick from a drug side effect.

In all personal injury lawsuits, you must show that the defendant breached the duty of care; in a medical malpractice lawsuit, this means that the doctor’s actions were outside the standard of care. It is obvious to all judges, jurors, and defendants that someone who was driving at 100 miles per hour on a city street was endangering other people. By contrast, the standard of care in medicine varies greatly from one instance to another, and the only way to find out whether the doctor’s actions were appropriate is to ask other doctors who perform the same type of treatments what they would have done in your case

For example, doctors must sometimes remove part of a patient’s rib in order to do a tissue biopsy to see whether a tumor in the chest is cancerous. You and I would not know which part of the rib to remove, nor would everyone who has graduated from medical school; not even every oncologist would know. You would need to ask a thoracic surgeon. Therefore, medical malpractice lawsuits often involve expert testimony from doctors with clinical experience in the same subfield of medicine as the defendant.

How Much Money Can You Win in a North Carolina Medical Malpractice Case?

Medical malpractice is when a doctor makes a preventable error and causes a patient’s health to get worse. The error could be something as egregious as operating on the wrong body part or as subtle as not noticing a detail in the patient’s medical records that would influence the doctor’s decision about which drug to prescribe. If the error by a physician or other healthcare worker (such as a triage nurse who allowed a patient’s health to deteriorate in the emergency room waiting room while the doctors treated other patients) is the direct cause of the patient’s poor health outcome, it is medical malpractice. It is not always medical malpractice when a treatment does not work or when you get sick from a drug side effect.

A medical malpractice lawyer can help you seek damages if you suffered financial losses because of a preventable medical error. Contact Plumides, Romano & Johnson, PC in Charlotte, North Carolina to discuss your case.

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Misunderstood Terms in Criminal Law

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Commonly Misunderstood Terms in North Carolina Criminal Law

In the court of public opinion, there are only two kinds of crime, namely violent crime and nonviolent crime, and violent crime is always bad. Even as public support increases for pretrial diversion programs and other ways of reducing mass incarceration, a lot of people will qualify their statements with “only for nonviolent offenses.” Therefore, if you are being accused of assault, domestic violence, or any other crime related to physical violence, you might feel like you have no one on your side. In fact, all defendants in criminal cases, no matter the seriousness of the crime of which they are accused, have legal rights, including the right to representation by a lawyer. If you are facing charges for a violent crime, contact a Charlotte criminal defense attorney.

Assault and Battery are Not Interchangeable

There are a lot of things that most people do not understand about criminal law until they get charged with a crime, including the differences between some closely related offenses. There are many incidents in which a defendant gets charged with assault and also with battery, but the terms “assault” and “battery” are not the same. Assault is any action that causes the victim to feel a reasonable fear of imminent physical harm, such as brandishing your fist in front of the victim’s face. You can be convicted of assault even if you do not make physical contact with the victim. Battery is any hostile touching of another person, such as punching or slapping, whether it causes a visible injury or not.

Murder, Manslaughter, and Homicide

According to North Carolina law, murder and homicide are the same. These terms mean that the defendant intentionally killed the victim; the degrees of homicide depend on how premeditated the killing was. Manslaughter is when the victim died as a result of the defendant’s actions, but the defendant did not intend to kill the victim. It is voluntary manslaughter if the defendant intended to injure the victim but did not think that the victim would die, such as if the defendant and the victim got into a fistfight and the victim died of their injuries. Involuntary manslaughter is if the defendant caused an accident in which the victim suffered fatal injuries.

Another common misconception about violent crimes is that they are all felonies. In fact, it is possible to get misdemeanor charges for assault or battery if the victim does not sustain serious injuries. The chances that the prosecutors will treat your assault or battery charges as misdemeanors are greater if the victim was not seriously injured and if there were no weapons involved.

Contact Plumides, Romano & Johnson, PC About Violent Crime Charges

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Workers’ Compensation Laws of NC

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Anyone who suffers an accidental injury at work has the right to file a workers’ compensation claim. Filing a workers’ compensation claim is a legally protected activity, which means that it is against the law for your employer to retaliate against you for filing one. If your employer demotes you, threatens to fire you, or creates a hostile work environment by assigning you undesirable tasks, constantly changing the rules, or consistently being unpleasant toward you, it is employer retaliation, and you should talk to an employment lawyer about it.

You can also file a workers’ compensation claim if you get diagnosed with an occupational disease, which is a disease for which your risk is higher than normal due to your line of work. Occupational diseases vary from one occupation to another, but examples include cancer for firefighters (due to the carcinogenic chemicals in the equipment they use) and carpal tunnel syndrome for textile workers.
Most of the time, you should file a workers’ compensation claim with the employer who issues your paycheck. If your employer is subcontracting with another company, you can also file the claim with the company that has hired your employer as a subcontractor.

You do not have to prove negligence on your employer’s part to get your employer to pay your workers’ compensation claim; it is not like filing a personal injury lawsuit or even a car insurance claim. You must only show that the injury or illness is a result of you doing your job. Employers sometimes deny workers’ compensation claims if they think that the symptoms are because of a pre-existing condition instead of because of the work injury. Your employer might also disagree with you about which treatments are necessary or about which work tasks you can still do after the injury.

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‘Birdnesting’ Approach To Joint Custody

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Many divorced parents in North Carolina take time to consider how to best provide their children with a sense of stability. There are a number of custody options that people can consider, and joint or shared custody is perhaps more popular than ever. One alternative type of shared custody option is called “birdnesting.” It means that the kids remain in the family home while each parent moves out on a rotating basis.

In most cases, this is an option for people with some means as the parents generally must maintain a small apartment in addition to the family property. The parents share the apartment as well as the home, moving in and out on a weekly basis while the kids remain in the family house. “Birdnesting” is motivated by a desire not to disrupt the children’s lives by moving, changing schools or making other major changes.

However, “birdnesting” is usually a short-term, transitional solution that is best suited for parents seeking an amicable divorce. When divorcing spouses are regularly arguing, those arguments are likely to continue rather than end during the nesting process. For these families, a traditional joint child custody arrangement may be more suitable. Even for parents with strong communication and a positive relationship, nesting is typically done for a period of three to six months only. It can provide kids with a practical and emotional time to transition to a new family lifestyle. If kept going for too long, however, it could encourage false ideas that the parents may reconcile in the future.

When parents think about divorce, issues relating to the children are often the most emotionally fraught. A family law attorney could help a divorcing spouse negotiate an agreement about child custody and a parenting plan.

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How Courts Handle Parental Disputes

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Parents in Charlotte who are getting a divorce might think that, if they feel their child is unsafe with the other parent because of alcohol or drug abuse, it will be easy to get a court to act. However, the process is not always that straightforward.

One court ruled that even though a father drank nightly, this did not mean he imbibed when he had the children. Parents will usually need documentation to get a court to act. Ideally, this would be something like police reports, but in the absence of such evidence, parents might get testimony from a child care provider or neighbor. If a court does determine that a parent may be a danger to the child, psychological testing or a blood test might be required.

Parents can keep records that will help them in case of a custody battle. This should include records of any conflict with the other parent and actions such as taking the child to the doctor. One man was worried that his wife would drink and drive with their 7-year-old son in the car.

Although he had been the main caregiver for the child throughout their marriage, with divorce looming, she cut off contact with him. He would still probably need documentation to show she was a danger to the child.

In a case like that one, the father could probably get help from the court to get access to the child since both parents have this right. One problem that may arise during a divorce is that some parents think differences in parenting approaches makes the other parent unfit. A court will generally not view it this way. Furthermore, it may hurt a parent’s custody case if the parent appears to be uncooperative.

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Driver’s License Restoration

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According to the North Carolina legislature, possessing a driver’s license in this state is considered a privilege, not a right. Because of this, there are many different ways in which to have this have that privilege temporarily suspended, or lost altogether. The most common ways that this occurs can be boiled down to three basic scenarios:

You are convicted of certain traffic offenses. Some convictions create an automatic suspension (accumulating too many points on your driver’s license; speeding 15 mph over the limit if you’re going more than 55 mph; or speeding more than 80 mph over the posted speed limit). Other convictions give the Department of Motor Vehicles the option of suspending your license (such as being convicted of reckless driving and speeding over 55 mph within the same year).
Getting a Failure to Appear (“FTA”) in court.
You are convicted of (or in some instances, simply charged with) an impaired driving offense. If you refuse to give a breath sample during a DWI investigation, have a blood alcohol content (“BAC”) of at least .08% or more, or a BAC of .04% while driving a commercial vehicle, your license is automatically revoked and suspended for 30 days If you are convicted of a DWI (whether by pleading guilty or after a trial), your license will be suspended for a year. Having multiple DWI convictions will also lead to longer suspensions or even a permanent suspension.

If your license is suspended for the first or second categories above, and you are pulled over while driving during that period of suspension, you will most likely be charged with Driving While License Revoked (“DWLR”). This is a Class 3 misdemeanor in North Carolina.

If, however, you are suspended under category three above and are caught driving, you will be charged with Driving While Revoked for an Impaired Revocation, which is a Class 1 misdemeanor, the most serious class of misdemeanors in North Carolina.

The most important takeaway is this, regardless of the type of suspension you may be facing: it is absolutely critical that you consult with an attorney in any of the above situations instead of simply going online and paying off your ticket. Many people do not realize this, but doing so is admitting that you are guilty. Consult with an attorney experienced in handling such matters as soon as possible to protect your license.

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Revoked License & Transportation Issues

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For many people in rural areas of North Carolina and even some urban areas, public transportation is not widely available enough that you’ll have a reliable way to commute. If you’re in that category of people and have had your driver’s license suspended because of an impaired driving-related conviction or certain traffic ticket convictions, you’re probably wondering how on earth you’re supposed to keep your job until you can reinstate your license. The good news is that you may qualify for a Limited Driving Privilege (“LDP”), which is governed by North Carolina General Statute § 20-179.3.

A Limited Driving Privilege is a court order that allows you to still drive for purposes related to employment, education, maintaining your household (i.e., going to buy groceries), religious worship, emergency medical care, substance abuse assessment, or treatment ordered by the court, and community service that is a condition of your probation. However, if you are suspended because of an impaired driving-related conviction, there are certain requirements that must be met in order for the court to find you eligible for an LDP in North Carolina:

At the time of the offense of conviction, you must have had a valid driver’s license or an otherwise valid license that had been expired for less than one year;
You cannot have been convicted of any other impaired driving offense (DWI/DUI) within the last seven years;
Since the date of the offense, you cannot have been convicted of another impaired driving offense;
You were sentenced as a Level 3, 4, or 5 for the instant DWI; and
You have completed a substance abuse assessment and filed a proof of completion with the court.

There are enhanced requirements to get an LDP if you had a blood alcohol content (BAC) of 0.15 or more at the time of the offense. In addition, the requirements to get an LDP are a bit different if you’re seeking to get an LDP due to a traffic ticket conviction unrelated to impaired driving. If you or a loved one are facing a DWI charge, traffic ticket, or license suspension, please contact one of our experienced criminal attorneys to help advocate for your rights.

IF CONVICTED Of A DWI OR DUI

A sentencing hearing will follow where the prosecutor and defendant can present aggravating and mitigating evidence.

There are enhanced requirements to get an LDP if you had a blood alcohol content (BAC) of 0.15 or more at the time of the offense. In addition, the requirements to get an LDP are a bit different if you’re seeking to get an LDP due to a traffic ticket conviction unrelated to impaired driving. If you or a loved one are facing a DWI charge, traffic ticket, or license suspension, please contact one of our experienced criminal attorneys to help advocate for your rights.