If a lawyer, dentist, real estate agent, engineer or investment advisor has acted negligently, then you may be entitled to compensation that is covered by their insurance policy. Even experienced professionals can make mistakes sometimes. Mistakes can be made unintentionally or because the professional was too busy to provide the level of skill that they should have exercised, or they improperly delegated work to a junior that was not qualified to handle the complications of the matter in question. Whatever the case may be, you should not have to pay the price for their negligence. People often have a sense of betrayal when they are the victim of a professional’s negligence because they hired and entrusted that professional to protect their interests.
In order to prove that a professional was negligent, it must be shown that they fell below the standard of care and skill that an ordinary professional would have exercised under similar circumstances. Cases involving an allegation of negligence against a professional often requires the plaintiff to hire a qualified expert in that area to provide a written opinion called an Expert Report. The Expert Report will set out the credentials of the expert that is been hired to write the report, the factual assumptions made in writing the report, and conclude with an opinion as to whether the professional in question was negligent. The plaintiff’s lawyer will then have to establish what the damages are as a result of the defendant’s negligence. Sometimes obtaining an Expert Report can be expensive. Choosing the right expert is important because they have to be qualified by a judge in order for their report to be admissible at trial. An expert is usually someone that is extremely experienced in their field, has outstanding academic credentials and published numerous articles and who perhaps has been qualified as an expert in court before. You do not want to hire someone to write an expert report that is unlikely to be qualified by the trial judge as an expert. The insurer representing the defendant will often obtain a responding Expert Report.
A professional negligence claim is often vigorously defended by the insurer even when the negligence may appear obvious. Crangle has obtained numerous settlements with respect to professional negligence claims.
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