Every once in a while, there’ll be a story that makes the national news that relates to personal injury work, and when that happens, we like to discuss it because it may be something that people are curious about and share. A recent article in the New York Times talked about a lawsuit that was filed against a dentist by a lady in Minnesota who had roughly ten different dental procedures that all went badly at the same time and claimed to have caused her disfigurement. Which raises the question: Can dentists be sued like medical doctors can be sued? The short answer is yes.
Dental Malpractice Injury And Damage
Dental malpractice cases, most of the time, don’t amount to enough injury or damage to justify pursuing them. There’s only so many horrible things you can do as a dentist to somebody’s mouth and to their teeth. All of those things combined, maybe if you did 10 or 12 things in one day, like this particular patient in the article had suffered.
Maybe all of those actions could amount to enough of an injury to justify bringing a case against a dentist, but most of the time, if, for example, you go in for a dental procedure and that procedure is done negligently and it causes you an injury, you technically have the right to bring a case. The question is, does it make economic sense for a law firm to handle that claim? Most of the time, the answer is no.
Medical Malpractice Cases In Florida
In Florida, you have to jump through so many hoops to get a case to court in a medical malpractice case that you are usually looking at the firm spending between $100,000 and $300,000. There has to be some major dental injury to justify spending $300,000 to go to a dentist. The dental malpractice case in the New York Times article was in Minnesota. Minnesotans don’t have the protections that the doctors in Florida and dentists in Florida have in regards to having to jump through those expensive hoops before you get the case to court. So, maybe in that state, they can bring a case for dental malpractice. They’re pretty much nonexistent in Florida because you have to jump through so many hoops to get the case to court.
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Bringing A Case Against A Dentist
It is basically prohibitive to bring a case against a dentist. There have been some cases that our firm has handled against dentists, but that’s been in a very tragic situation where somebody died under the care of a dentist from being given too much of the sedative medication during a procedure, resulting in a wrongful death case.
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There’s been cases where there’s been an assault while the person was under the effects of the anesthesia at a dentist’s practice. Those kinds of dental cases are still worth pursuing in Florida. But wall cases have to be reviewed as medical malpractice cases because they’re under the medical malpractice statutes in Florida.
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How Much Can I Recover for a Medical Malpractice Case?
Florida law allows victims of medical malpractice to make claims for economic and noneconomic damages suffered because of their injury. Economic damages include lost income, medical expenses, and funeral expenses. They are damages that can be valued objectively because they are tangible. Noneconomic damages are more subjective damages. They include pain and suffering, mental anguish, and inconvenience. Noneconomic damages are more complex, but your lawyer can give you more information about the types of damages that you are entitled to. The value of the compensation you receive will depend on different factors including the value of the damages that you can prove. However, no lawyer can tell you with certainty how much compensation you will recover.
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Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/03/us/minnesota-dentist-lawsuit.html?searchResultPosition=1
https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/dental-malpractice-lawsuits.html