What is a “lack of informed consent” medical malpractice case?
There are essentially two kinds of medical malpractice cases: The most common kind is where your doctor simply made an error or mistake causing you harm (e.g., failure to properly diagnose you, botched surgery, wrong prescription). The second, and less frequent kind, is where the doctor did not necessarily make any mistakes, but instead simply failed to tell you (“inform ” you) of the common risks or undesirable outcomes of a procedure or surgery. This is called “lack of informed consent”. For example, if you elect to have back surgery, and a known risk of the surgery is partial paralysis, and you end up with partial paralysis, but your doctor never told you about that risk, then you may have a “lack of informed consent” medical malpractice case. In order to win your lack of informed consent case, you will have to testify that, had you been informed of the risk, you would not have elected to have the surgery.
