Medical malpractice law is form of tort law designed to offer a remedy to patient who suffers an injury from an act or omission by a health care provider, which deviates from accepted standards of practice in the medical community. Medical malpractice is professional negligence (by a healthcare provider) that causes an injury. Examples of medical malpractice include:

• Misdiagnosis of, or failure to diagnose, a disease or medical condition;
• Failure to provide appropriate treatment for a medical condition;
• Unreasonable delay in treating a diagnosed medical condition;

An injured patient can bring a medical malpractice action against any responsible licensed health care provider, including doctors, counselors, psychologists and psychotherapists.

Medical malpractice law is a highly technical field of law, and malpractice lawsuits tend to be fiercely defended by well-funded defense firms. Even within the specialized practice of medical malpractice law, some lawyers have subspecialties of practice, for example focusing on surgical errors, misdiagnosis, or birth trauma cases.

Medical malpractice lawsuits can be very expensive to pursue. Significant technical skills may be needed in prosecuting a malpractice claim. This creates a risk that an inexperienced lawyer may not be sufficiently conversant with the medical issues, or might make a technical error, which causes a case to be lost or dismissed. In addition, substantial costs may need to be incurred to prepare for the malpractice prosecution.

Mississippi passed a tort reform act in 2002 with several provisions specific to medical malpractice. Most of these apply to lawsuits filed on or after January 1, 2003. The act provides that a medical malpractice action may only be brought in the county in which the alleged act or omission occurred (about 178 medical malpractice attorneys practice in Mississippi). Some of the act’s key provisions include the following:

• Noneconomic damages at are sapped at $500,000 in medical liability cases.
• There are no special limits on attorney fees in medical malpractice cases.

Medical malpractice actions must start within 2 years from the act or omission that resulted in injury, or from the reasonable date of its discovery. No malpractice action may start more than seven years after the date of the act or omission underlying the malpractice claim. This includes death claims, under a 2006 decision that overruled prior law and held that the statute of limitations for wrongful death is the same as that for the act that led to the death.

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