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Medical Negligence Time Limit
Introduction to Medical Negligence Time Limit
When you are harmed or injured while receiving medical care, you may or may not be able to be compensated in court for the expenses that you incurred due to those injuries. The determining factor will be whether your injury was caused by medical negligence or not. The difficult part in this process is determining what medical negligence is and how to prove it in court. For you to be able to win a medical negligence case in court, you must show that your doctor, surgeon, dentist or other medical professional failed to provide you with adequate care and that care was out of the realm of how most medical professionals would have handled the case.
Medical Negligence Three Year Time Limit
The Limitation Act of 1990 was created to put a time limit on when people are allowed to file a claim in court. The medical negligence time limit is generally three years from the date that the harm or injury occurred or from the date when the patient realised that medical negligence has occurred. This generally means that you have three years from the time you know that your medical professional was negligent and that their negligence caused you harm or injury. The medical negligence time limit does not include setting up an appointment with a solicitor or even hiring a solicitor but you must actually file the court papers to start the claim prior to the three year mark. It is your best option to start the proceedings as soon as possible so you do not miss this deadline.
If you have had a loved one who died as a result of medical negligence, a claim can be filed in court on their behalf. The medical negligence time limit of three years holds true in these cases too. The time limit begins on the patients date of death or from the date that their family becomes knowledgeable that medical negligence occurred. You should definitely file a claim in court well before the three year mark or you may risk having your claim denied.
Exceptions to the Medical Negligence Time Limit
There are some exceptions to the medical negligence time limit, especially when dealing with children who are under the age of eighteen when the harm or injury occurred. In these cases, the time limit does not begin until the child's eighteenth birthday. At that point the child has three years or until their twenty-first birthday to file a claim in court. This does not matter how long prior the incident happened as long as they file a claim prior to turning twenty-one.
People of any age who are deemed to have a severe brain injury or a mental disability that has left them without the capacity to understand the legal process are also exempt from the medical negligence time limit. In almost all of these cases, there is no time limit set on these individuals because the belief is that their learning difficulty is so severe they cannot be held to be accountable to any set time limits. This allows them to file a medical negligence claim at any time no matter how long ago the incident occurred.
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