Whether mistake rises to the level of legal malpractice will turn on a host of other considerations, but keeping these basic questions in mind is a good start in the analysis. Michael S. LeBoff, P.C., is a partner with Klein & Wilson in Newport Beach, California.
This is often where the rubber meets the road in legal malpractice cases. Even where an attorney made an obvious mistake, that mistake must have injured the client. The classic example of negligence is the attorney who did not file a lawsuit before the statute of limitations expired.
Even if it was an inexcusable error, it gives rise to a viable legal malpractice claim only if the client proves to a “legal certainty” he or she would have won the case had it been filed on time. The client must also prove how much money he or she would have won and that the judgment was collectible.
Even if it was an inexcusable error, it gives rise to a viable legal malpractice claim only if the client proves to a “legal certainty” he or she would have won the case had it been filed on time. The client must also prove how much money he or she would have won and that the judgment was collectible. Were the damages significant?
According to the Ethics Code, psychologists should avoid relationships that could reasonably impair their professional performance, or could exploit or harm the other party. Behnke emphasizes, however, that multiple relationships that are not reasonably expected to have such effects are not unethical.
To help prevent confidentiality problems, psychologists can: Discuss the limits of confidentiality, including their uses of electronic transmission and the foreseeable uses of confidential information, as soon as possible . Ensure the safe storage of confidential records.
Mandatory reporting laws were not created to have clinicians decide whether abuse or neglect is happening, says Cohen, but to have them bring the facts to the attention of authorities, who will decide. "If you wait and nothing bad happens, you've still violated the law," he says.
For example, when one partner wants a better marriage but the other wants a "painless" divorce, psychologists should clarify at the beginning that they cannot decide whether the couple should stay together or offer expert opinions later on during a divorce suit.
Every psychologist knows they are obligated by the Ethics Code to practice only where they are competent. But sometimes difficulties arise when, for example, they practice in emerging areas where there aren't clear standards.
While such requests may be well-intentioned, psychologists need to carefully balance the disclosure with their ethical obligations to protect their patients' confidential ity.
APA's Record Keeping Guidelines advise practitioners to take into account the nature of the services, the source of the information recorded, the intended use of the records and the psychologist's professional obligation. Never alter a record after the fact.
First, more than 90 % of all lawsuits are settled out of court, most of them virtually on the courthouse steps after months or years of preparation and expense. Some of this expense is necessary, but, on the whole, huge quantities of time and money are spent preparing for events that don’t occur.
Mediation has been used to settle conflicts of every kind, from international political disagreements and labor disputes to landlord-tenant, consumer, and medical malpractice contests. There has been a rapid increase in business use of mediation over the past few years, some of it in imaginative new forms.
The object of mediation is to help the parties resolve their own dispute, so a mediator’s functions can vary depending on the personalities and wishes of the parties and their attorneys, the nature and history of the dispute, and the personality and skills of the mediator.
U.S. corporations pay more than $ 20 billion a year to litigation attorneys—an alarming fact that distracts our attention from other and often more important business costs of litigating our disputes. Lawyers’ fees and other direct costs get the most attention because they’re easy to measure.
Judge Dorothy Nelson of the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco traveled to Israel several years ago to study the laws of divorce as administered by different religious groups. In Jerusalem she attended a court hearing conducted by three Greek Orthodox priests in long black robes and long white beards. Court was conducted in a Quonset hut with paint peeling from the walls, furnished only with a plain wooden table and chairs. A wife was suing her husband for divorce. As her lawyer rose to his feet holding a handful of papers from which to plead her case, he was waved gently aside by the presiding priest, who turned to the wife and asked her to tell her own story.
First, it is not the most effective way to resolve some kinds of disputes. Second, it can be made more effective for most kinds of disputes by borrowing certain of the nonadversarial features of other forms of dispute resolution.
Moreover, in either situation, the resolution process itself can take a heavy toll on the participants if creative methods of resolving disputes are not given a chance. Perhaps the most important parallel, however, is that the modern manager can follow the lead of the priests in seeking a better way.