What is the difference between 'medical malpractice' and 'wrongful death'?

What is the difference between 'medical malpractice' and 'wrongful death'?

Michael Ehline (Attorney at Law) gives expert video advice on: What is 'wrongful death'?; Who can sue for wrongful death?; How is the amount of damages determined in a wrongful death case? and more...

Medical malpractice is simply a heightened standard of negligence that is placed out for medical care providers. Because they're experts in their fields they're simply held to a higher standard of care. If they commit medical malpractice they can cause many problems for a plaintiff such as death or decapitation, or amputation, or cancers just depending on what they do. They could be injecting someone with a radioactive formula for some kind of a MRI scan or a CT scan that was too high of a dose that could potentially cause severe damage or harm to someone. So in a medical malpractice type of a claim you're simply suing a physician or care provider for breaching their heightened duty of care which caused you damages whereas a wrongful death case is a case where someone simply caused your death. Now a medical malpractice case can be a wrongful death case but a wrongful death case doesn't always necessarily have to be a medical malpractice case.