Call for Consultation (337) 366-8994
Call for Consultation (337) 366-8994
Let’s be direct about what you are feeling right now.
You didn’t just hire a service; you placed your health, your trust, and your future in a medical professional’s hands. When something goes wrong—when a doctor or a hospital makes a mistake that leaves you worse off—the feeling of betrayal can be worse than the physical injury itself. It’s confusing, it’s frustrating, and you deserve answers.
The truth is, no one ever plans to sue their doctor. You went to them for care, assuming they would treat you with the same level of care and caution you would demand for yourself. Now, that trust is broken.
We start here because before we talk about lawsuits and deadlines, we have to talk about what happened.
The hard legal distinction is this: Not every bad medical outcome is a malpractice case. At the Ikerd Law Firm, we turn down far more cases of medical malpractice than we take.
Medicine is complicated. Sometimes, despite every precaution, a patient suffers a bad result (as defense attorneys like to say, “no one goes to a doctor because they are feeling well”).
That is not negligence. Our job as your lawyers is to determine if what happened crossed the line into negligence—a preventable mistake that no competent medical professional should have made.
The legal system in Louisiana gives us a clear standard to use. It is a Two-Part Test. If your situation fails either part of this test, you do not have a case under Louisiana law.
The Urgent Warning: If you believe a medical mistake caused you harm, you must act now. Louisiana has an extremely strict 12-month deadline (called “Prescription” under Louisiana Law, but commonly referred to as the Statute of Limitations) to start this process. Generally, you have one year from the date of the malpractice or one year from the date you knew or should have known to file a claim.
The clock is ticking, and time is the most valuable asset in these cases. Do not wait for answers; contact us immediately to protect your deadline.
For your injury to qualify as legal malpractice in Louisiana, we must successfully prove two things. Both are mandatory.
Part 1: The Mistake (Breach of Standard of Care)
We must prove that your doctor or healthcare provider made a mistake that another reasonable, qualified doctor in the same field would not have made. It has to be a preventable error, not an unavoidable risk of the procedure.
Part 2: The Harm (Causation)
We must prove that the doctor’s specific mistake from Part 1 was the direct, legal cause of your new or worsened injury. The mistake must have created the harm, not the underlying disease or condition you were being treated for.
If we can’t prove the failure/malpractice and that the failure/malpractice directly caused the injury, there is no case.
The key to Part 1 is understanding the Standard of Care. This is the baseline—the accepted level of professional care a medical professional should provide, given the patient’s condition and location. It’s the minimum expected level of competence.
Think of it this way: if a mechanic forgets to tighten the lug nuts on your tire, and the tire falls off five miles later, that is negligence. Another competent mechanic would have tightened them. The Standard of Care for a mechanic is to “make sure all lug nuts are tightened on tires before allowing the car to leave the shop.”
Conversely, for Doctors, the Standard of Care says, “The doctor must act as a reasonably careful, qualified doctor in the same field would act in the same situation.”
The main (legal) problem here is that proving the mistake goes beyond your feeling of injustice.
In Louisiana, you cannot simply stand in court and say, “My doctor was negligent.” The law requires that you provide testimony from another doctor—an Expert Witness—who is qualified in the same field.
This expert must be willing to:
This expert opinion is the linchpin of Part 1. Finding and hiring these experts is expensive and time-consuming, but without one, your claim ends before it even starts.
For you to relate the law to your situation, here are some common ways the Standard of Care is breached:
Part 2 is the most difficult legal hurdle. It is where many potential malpractice cases fail.
It asks: Did the doctor’s specific mistake (Part 1) directly and legally cause you a new injury or a significant worsening of your existing condition?
This is called the ‘Would’ vs. ‘Could’ Problem. The law demands we prove that if the doctor had acted correctly, you would have had a better outcome.
If you had suffered the same bad result anyway, there is no legal causation.
A doctor fails to diagnose a patient’s Stage 4, terminal cancer for three months (The Mistake). The patient passes away. In this scenario, we might find that even with a timely diagnosis, the patient would have still passed away due to the severity of the cancer. The Mistake existed, but the patient’s death was caused by the underlying Disease, not the three-month delay.
The case fails Part 2. In this case, however, Louisiana law allows victims of medical malpractice to claim loss of a chance of a better outcome, based on the premise that the chance to survive is worth something, and a doctor taking that chance based on their failure to diagnose is a compensable distinct injury under Louisiana law.
A doctor delays diagnosing a patient’s Stage 1 cancer for three months, during which time it spreads rapidly to Stage 3. The patient now faces intense chemotherapy and a significantly reduced life expectancy.
We can prove that if the doctor had acted correctly, the patient would have been cured with minor surgery. Here, the Mistake caused the cancer to spread and worsened the prognosis. The case meets both parts of the test.
To meet Part 2, you must also have suffered actual, measurable harm.
We look for injuries that have resulted in:
You must be significantly injured by the negligence itself.
If your case meets the Two-Part Test, the next hurdle is unique to Louisiana: the Medical Review Panel (MRP).
In Louisiana, before you can file a lawsuit against a private healthcare provider, you are legally required to file a claim and have it reviewed by the MRP. This is a mandatory, non-negotiable step. It is designed to screen out weak cases early in the process.
The MRP consists of three doctors and one non-voting attorney chairperson.
Their Function is simple: they review the medical records, deposition testimony, and the arguments presented by both sides. They then issue a written opinion on whether they believe the evidence supports the conclusion that the Standard of Care was breached.
The Finding: Crucially, the panel’s opinion is not binding—meaning you can still file a lawsuit even if they rule against you. However, their finding is admissible as evidence in court. A negative MRP finding makes a case much harder to win.
Filing a claim with the MRP does one extremely important thing: it interrupts the strict one-year Statute of Limitations. The clock essentially stops while the panel conducts its review. Once the panel issues its opinion, you have an additional 90 days to file your lawsuit in state court.
This procedural detail—filing the claim correctly, gathering the expert reports, managing the MRP—is why you need a medical malpractice attorney (specialist) immediately. A general personal injury lawyer often lacks the necessary experience to navigate this complex, front-loaded process.
When you work with a malpractice firm, we have to talk about money—specifically, the legal limits on recovery set by Louisiana law.
Louisiana law limits the total amount you can recover for “general damages” (non-economic losses like pain, suffering, emotional distress, and loss of quality of life) and lost wages past and future, to $500,000.
This limit applies regardless of the severity of the injury. This is not a cap on lawyer fees; it is a cap on the compensation you can receive for your life-altering injury. This is most devastating when our clients have died: the Louisiana Legislature has codified that their lives were only worth, at the most, $500,000 to them (survival action) and their family (wrongful death action).
It is vital to know that the $500,000 cap does not apply to:
If your injury requires serious, ongoing medical care for the rest of your life, the state of Louisiana has a Patient’s Compensation Fund (PCF) designed to pay for those medical expenses. These payments are not included in the $500,000 cap.
If you meet the criteria, the PCF can pay for things like medications, physical therapy, nursing care, and specialized equipment for the rest of your life.
The cap means that medical malpractice cases in Louisiana are highly selective. Because these cases are extremely expensive to pursue (due to the high cost of expert witnesses and the mandatory MRP process), we must ensure the case is strong enough to justify the immense time, effort, and expense (and risk), given the ultimate ceiling on damages. We only take cases where we believe the breach and the causation are clear and the injury is significant.
You are reading this because you are looking for confirmation and a path forward.
Here is exactly what you should do right now:
Do not wait. Start gathering every piece of paper: doctor’s notes, hospital discharge summaries, test results, and correspondence. You have a legal right to these records. The moment a claim is filed, hospitals and doctors become much less cooperative. Get them yourself first.
If hospital risk management, an insurance adjuster, or anyone contacts you offering to “help,” do not sign any releases, settlements, or waivers. Signing a medical release without legal guidance can give the other side permission to review every part of your medical history, including unrelated issues, which they will use against you.
(Remember, there is a 12-month deadline to file!)
Medical malpractice is a specialty, and the time it takes just to get the required expert reports and file with the MRP means every week matters. Do not hire a general personal injury lawyer. You need a Louisiana firm that understands the MRP process, the $500,000 cap, and the complex rules of the Patient’s Compensation Fund.
The Final Statement of Trust: We understand what you’re going through. Your trust was broken. Our goal is to handle the legal process—the records, the experts, the paperwork—so you can focus on your recovery and health. You don’t have to face a massive hospital or insurance company alone.
Q1: How much does it cost me to hire a malpractice lawyer?
A: Zero dollars upfront. We work on a contingency fee basis. This means we only get paid an attorney’s fee if we successfully recover money for you through a settlement or verdict. Furthermore, the firm pays all the significant up-front litigation costs—including the thousands of dollars required for expert witness fees, depositions, and filing the MRP claim. If we do not win your case, you owe us nothing for our time or the costs we advanced.
Q2: I don’t have my medical records. Can I still start a claim?
A: Yes, absolutely. You have a legal right to all your medical records, and not having them should not delay contacting an attorney. Once we take your case, we immediately use legal authority to issue subpoenas and official requests to gather those records for you. Securing the records is our job; protecting your deadline is the urgent first step we need to take together.
Q3: How long will a medical malpractice case take?
A: You need to set realistic expectations. Malpractice cases are almost always lengthy. Due to the mandatory Medical Review Panel (MRP) process (which can take 6 months to a year itself), the investigation time, and the extensive discovery required, a typical Louisiana medical malpractice case takes between 2 and 4 years from the date the MRP claim is filed until a final settlement or verdict.
Q4: Can I sue the hospital, the doctor, and the nurses all at once?
A: Yes. We will identify every individual and entity—the doctor, the surgical team, the nurses, and the hospital—that may have been negligent. This is critical because liability is often shared among multiple parties. We need to identify all potential negligent parties to build the strongest case and ensure all responsible insurance policies and funds are held accountable.
Q5: Can I still see the same doctor or use the same hospital if I file a claim?
A: You can, but we strongly recommend you do not. For your health and for the protection of your case, you need independent, unbiased medical care. You should find a new doctor or hospital that is not connected to the entity you are pursuing a claim against. Your health is the priority, and the best evidence of your injury comes from new, independent medical providers.
Q6: What if my doctor practices medicine in Texas, but I live in Louisiana? Which state’s law applies?
A: Generally, the law of the state where the injury physically occurred is the law that applies. If you were injured in a hospital or clinic located in Louisiana, then Louisiana law will typically govern your case, regardless of where your doctor lives or practices most of the time. This is a complex legal area, but if the harm occurred here, we proceed under Louisiana’s rules, including the MRP and the $500,000 cap. (Chad Ikerd is barred in Texas, too, so if you are dealing with a Texas Medical Malpractice case, consult with us as well)
Q7: What is the most common reason malpractice cases fail in court?
A: The most common reason is the failure to satisfy Part 2 of the Two-Part Test: Causation. It’s easy to prove a mistake (Part 1) if a doctor tells you one was made, but it is extremely hard to prove that the mistake was the direct cause of your new injury. Often, the defense successfully argues that the patient’s condition or disease would have caused the poor outcome regardless of the doctor’s actions. This is why expert witness testimony on causation is paramount.
Contact Ikerd Law Firm today for a free, confidential case review. We will apply the Two-Part Test to your unique facts and help you get the answers you deserve.
Call (337) 366-8994.
