Medical Malpractice Attorneys in Hobbs, NM

Why Choose Kemmy Law Firm?

Though there are many medical malpractice attorneys in New Mexico, we recommend you give us a call. We have seen our community members in Southwest Texas and Southeast New Mexico injured by doctors, nurse practitioners, nurses, dentists, pharmacists, and other medical professionals who are careless or reckless with patients’ safety.

You and your family should be able to trust your medical providers, and when practitioners cause you unnecessary harm, they should be held responsible. The Kemmy Law Firm lawyers have been doing that for medical malpractice victims for decades and have had considerable success in obtaining them settlements and verdicts in these cases.

We offer the knowledge, experience, and resources you expect from much larger firms. We acquired this level of skill by not being afraid to take complex cases. We learned how to secure the best outcomes for our clients by going to court and presenting their cases to juries.

We also are careful to limit our cases. We firmly prioritize quality legal representation over quantity. We make sure that we have plenty of time to investigate your case, analyze the evidence, and work with experts to build a strong claim for compensation. Our goal is to make you feel like the only client we have.

Medical Malpractice Cases We Handle

Over the decades, we have handled a wide range of medical malpractice lawsuits. We have represented clients with just about every conceivable medical malpractice case.

We have the knowledge and experience to evaluate your medical malpractice case, and if it’s a case we are able to take on, we know how to prove your case and show the extent of your physical, psychological, and financial injuries.

Some of the most common forms of medical negligence we have seen include:

• Misdiagnosis: You may have a claim based on a misdiagnosis if a physician gave you the wrong diagnosis when they had all of the information necessary to make a correct diagnosis. The misdiagnosis must have led to a deterioration in your condition or an additional injury that you would not have suffered if the physician had gotten it right.
• Delayed Diagnosis: You may also have a claim if your physician correctly diagnosed your condition but did so too late, even though they had everything they needed to diagnose sooner. If the unnecessary delay in diagnosis deteriorated your health or caused you a separate injury, you may have a claim.
• Failure to Diagnose: If you had to go to another physician after weeks or months of trying to receive an accurate diagnosis, talk with a lawyer about your previous physician’s failure to diagnose you. That physician may have failed to take the steps necessary to figure out what was wrong.
• Surgical Errors: Many things can go wrong in an operating room, and not all bad surgery outcomes are medical malpractice. However, many New Mexico surgical patients are unnecessarily injured because their doctor or hospital did not follow basic surgical safeguards. These types of surgical errors include: undergoing a procedure on the wrong body part; undergoing the incorrect procedure; having a medical instrument left inside you; and having a surgeon fail to correct a mistake made during the procedure. Patients can also be harmed because of inadequate precautions before surgery or failures to follow-up afterward.
• Anesthesia Errors: Anesthesia is an essential part of surgery. If you were not properly anesthetized for a procedure and could feel pain or were awake when you should be asleep, call a medical malpractice attorney immediately. Other anesthesia errors include failure to monitor your oxygen levels, oxygen deprivation, prolonged sedation, and failure to recognize and act when there are complications.
• Medication Errors: You may suffer from an injury if a physician prescribes you an inappropriate drug or if you are improperly administered a drug while at a doctor’s office or hospital.
• Pharmaceutical Errors: Patients should only take prescription medications as prescribed and directed by their physicians. Despite receiving an appropriate prescription, you may have been given the incorrect drug or the wrong dose of the right drug by a pharmacy. These cases involve a detailed investigation of what was prescribed, what the pharmacy gave, and how the pharmacy’s error harmed the patient.
• Birth Injuries: You, your child, or the mother of your child may have experienced a preventable injury during pregnancy, a vaginal birth, or a cesarean section. Birth injuries are often devastating and tragic to a family, and birth injury cases are complex and difficult. You should speak directly with a qualified medical malpractice lawyer if you or a family member has a child who has suffered an unnecessary birth injury.

Our Lawyers Will Identify Who’s Responsible

When it comes to medical malpractice claims, it is challenging to figure out what went wrong and who is responsible. It also is important to determine if the party directly at fault for the harm you have suffered is the person who should compensate you. If a company employs the medical professional, that business may be responsible for providing the compensation for their employee’s errors.

Potentially liable parties include: a physician or other medical professional; a medical group; a hospital or other medical facility; a medical tech company; or a larger company that engages in healthcare services, like a nationwide pharmacy or hospital staffing company.

Our medical malpractice lawyers always conduct a thorough investigation into your injury. We work with medical experts to closely review your medical records. We investigate the medical professional and facility’s backgrounds. We talk with any witnesses who are willing to speak with us. We take a deep dive into your case and gather as much evidence as possible regarding what went wrong.

Once we have a strong understanding of what happened and who is responsible, we will move forward with your claim. If the medical professional is not a qualified healthcare provider, we may recommend filing suit right away. However, if the professional is a qualified healthcare provider, we must follow the process set out in the New Mexico Medical Practice Act.

Medical Malpractice Compensation

If you can establish that a medical provider’s negligence caused you harm, then the law may entitle you to compensation for your:

• Past and Future Medical Expenses
• Past and Future Lost Wages
• Physical Pain and Suffering
• Emotional Distress
• Disfigurement
• Disability
• Loss of Enjoyment of Life
• Loss of Consortium (that is, the diminishment or loss of a family relationship)

In some circumstances, you also may be entitled to punitive damages. You might seek punitive damages if the medical professional’s actions were intentional, malicious, egregious, or reckless.

Medical Malpractice Damage Caps

If the medical professional who caused you harm is a qualified healthcare professional under the Act, then the damages you can receive are capped at $600,000. This cap does not include past and future medical care or punitive damages, though.

Additionally, the healthcare provider’s specific liability is limited to $200,000. The rest of your medical malpractice compensation would be paid from the New Mexico Patient Compensation Fund.

Medical Malpractice Settlements

Many medical malpractice claims are resolved through pre-trial settlements. We strongly recommend working closely with a lawyer and medical expert before accepting a settlement.

Accepting a settlement may be your goal. However, you need the amount to cover not only the expenses and financial losses you have already incurred but also your future medical expenses and financial losses. If you need further medical care, work with a medical expert to estimate the cost of your appointments, medications, and treatments. If you cannot return to your old job, you will need to work with a vocational expert and economists to calculate your lost future income.

Many cases are best resolved by settlement. However, sometimes the only way to ensure accountability, to make sure this doesn’t happen to someone else, and to receive fair compensation is through trial. The decision about whether to settle or proceed to trial is ultimately yours, and we know it can be a difficult decision to make. However, at the Kemmy Law Firm, our decades of experience in representing medical malpractice clients help us give you the quality expert recommendation you need to decide what is the best way forward for your case.

Fatal Medical Negligence

If your parent, spouse, or child died because of medical negligence, then talk with a medical malpractice attorney right away. In New Mexico, your potential legal claim is governed by the wrongful death law.

The personal representative of your loved one’s estate can file a claim on behalf of the surviving spouse and children, or in some cases, the surviving parents.

Medical Malpractice Claims

Medical malpractice claims have to follow a certain process if the New Mexico Medical Malpractice Act applies. Because a specific law governs the process of most medical malpractice claims, it critical you work with a trial attorney who has experience with New Mexico medical malpractice law.

Failing to work with an injury attorney with a deep understanding of and experience with the Act can lead to preventable legal mistakes and delays in your case.

Kemmy Law Firm will guide you through:

• Investigating your medical injury to determine if a medical professional violated basic standards for patient safety.
• Identifying the liable medical professional or business.
• Hiring medical and other experts to evaluate and support your claim.
• Determining if the medical professional is qualified under the Act by contacting the Medical Review Commission.
• If the liable party is a qualified healthcare provider under the Act, submitting a complaint to the Commission.
• Representing you at the Commission hearing before a panel of three health care providers and three State Bar members.
• Reviewing the panel’s non-binding decision regarding whether it is probable that medical negligence occurred and injured you.
• Filing a medical malpractice lawsuit following the panel’s decision, or right away, if the professional is not a qualified healthcare provider.
• Negotiating a settlement with the medical professional and insurance provider.
• If the case does not settle, we are fully capable of trying your medical malpractice case to a jury and protecting any verdict you receive on appeal.

Medical Malpractice Statute of Limitations in NM

New Mexico gives you three years from the date of the medical negligence to file a lawsuit.

If your claim is covered by the Act, then there is no provision that grants you more time to discover your injury. If the medical professional is a qualified health provider, you have three years. That’s it. However, if the law does not apply, then you may have more than three years to file based on the discovery rule.

Also, under the Act, a minor who is younger than six years old has until their ninth birthday to file. In the case of a birth injury, the parent or child has nine years to decide to file.

There also is another limitation. If the medical provider is employed by the state or the hospital or facility is considered a government entity, then you must file within two years of the date of the malpractice.

We Take Medical Malpractice Cases to Trial and Win

When you pursue a medical malpractice case, your goal may be to receive a settlement as soon as possible. We understand this urge, and in some cases, that is what happens: the patient and responsible medical provider reach an early settlement that satisfactorily resolves the claim.

However, unfortunately, in our experience, that is not what typically happens. Most of the time, obtaining full and fair compensation requires a thorough investigation, working with experts, and having an insurance claim attorney place you in the best position possible. To do this, we often need to file a lawsuit and utilize the discovery process.

We understand litigation is intimidating, but at the Kemmy Law Firm, we often see our clients’ efforts as heroic. When a serious preventable injury has occurred in a medical setting, bring suit helps fix broken systems and ensure that the errors that led to your injury do not happen in your community again.

Working as a family, we have become experienced in this work. We are not afraid to turn over every leaf and rock looking for evidence and helping you ensure that your injury is fully accounted for and that your lawsuit helps leave your community safer.

Our aggressive and thorough trial preparations also allow us to put you in the best position possible to negotiate you a fair settlement. It also is through these preparations that we know when an insurer is not negotiating in good faith. We know when an appropriate settlement is not going to happen and when to advise you to move forward with a trial.

Though we can never guarantee a specific outcome to a trial, we can discuss our history of winning similar medical malpractice cases. We have a strong track record of success, having won millions in settlements and verdicts for our clients.