When Medical Care Falls Below the Standard, We Hold Providers Accountable
You trusted a doctor, a hospital, or a care facility with your health — and that trust was broken. When a preventable error changes your life, you deserve answers, accountability, and the resources to move forward.
Medical malpractice happens when a healthcare provider fails to deliver the level of care that a reasonably careful provider in the same specialty would have delivered under the same circumstances — and a patient is harmed as a result. Not every bad outcome is malpractice. Medicine carries real risk, and even excellent care can end badly. The question is whether the care itself fell below the accepted standard.
These cases are among the most complex in civil litigation. They require medical records review, qualified expert witnesses in the relevant specialty, and a firm willing to take on hospital systems and the insurers who defend them. The Law Offices of Cohen, Cohen & Cohen, PC brings that experience to patients and families across Los Angeles and Ventura Counties.
What makes a case medical malpractice?
To bring a claim, four things generally have to be established:
- Duty: A provider-patient relationship existed, so the provider owed you a professional duty of care.
- Breach: The care you received fell below the accepted standard of care for that specialty — established through the testimony of qualified medical experts.
- Causation: That failure, rather than the underlying illness or injury, caused the harm you suffered.
- Damages: You sustained real losses — additional treatment, lost income, permanent impairment, pain, or the death of a loved one.
Causation is where most medical malpractice cases are won or lost. Defense teams will argue your outcome was the natural course of your condition. Building the medical record that separates the two is the work.
Cases we handle
- Surgical Errors & Retained Objects
- Wrong-Site or Wrong-Patient Surgery
- Misdiagnosis & Delayed Diagnosis
- Failure to Diagnose Cancer
- Emergency Room Negligence
- Birth Injuries & Obstetric Negligence
- Anesthesia Errors
- Medication & Pharmacy Errors
- Failure to Order or Act on Test Results
- Radiology & Imaging Misreads
- Hospital-Acquired Infections
- Negligent Post-Operative Care
- Lack of Informed Consent
- Nursing & Hospital Staff Negligence
- Nursing Home & Elder Care Neglect
- Wrongful Death from Medical Negligence
What a medical malpractice claim can recover
- Medical Costs: Corrective surgeries, hospitalization, rehabilitation, in-home care, medical equipment, and the lifetime cost of ongoing treatment.
- Lost Income: Wages lost during recovery, plus diminished earning capacity when an injury permanently changes what you are able to do.
- Pain & Suffering: Physical pain, emotional distress, disfigurement, and the loss of activities and independence that made your life yours.
- Losses to Your Family: In wrongful death cases, the financial support, guidance, and companionship a family loses when a preventable error takes a loved one.
California limits non-economic damages — pain and suffering — in medical malpractice cases under MICRA. A 2022 reform raised those limits substantially and increases them every year, with separate limits for injury cases and wrongful death claims. Economic losses such as medical bills and lost earnings are not capped. We can walk you through what the current limits mean for your specific case.
California deadlines are short — and unforgiving
In California, a medical malpractice claim generally must be filed within three years of the injury or one year from the date you discovered (or reasonably should have discovered) the injury — whichever comes first. State law also requires that the provider be given 90 days’ notice before a lawsuit is filed, and claims against public hospitals carry far shorter deadlines. Different rules apply to injured children.
Miss the deadline and the claim is gone, no matter how strong it was. If you suspect something went wrong with your care, the time to ask is now. Contact us for a free, confidential case review — we handle medical malpractice cases on a contingency fee basis, so there are no upfront costs and no fee unless we recover for you.
We hope you'll never need us, but if you do, we will be here for YOU.
Schedule your free case evaluation with the Law Offices of Cohen, Cohen & Cohen, PC today! Call us at 818.347.2121 or contact us online right away to get started.
