Originally posted by Udie
If in a week/month I still am diddlyed up in the head do I have a case?
Sorry the weekend intervened here, and I hope you're feeling better.
The most accurate answer to your question is: it depends (and you wonder why people hate lawyers). The basic issue is whether your doctor complied with the medical standard of current medicine. To know the answer to that, you have to have (in most jurisdictions) another doctor testify as to what the standard is (do you prescribe this med on the first date? or only after some additional testing? or only when a patient is in a hospital? or do you start with a small dosage and work your way up?). Your second physician may be a start. Beware, however, that it extremely difficult to get a doctor to testify against another doctor.
There is a second theory for many med mal cases, based on "informed consent." It's the common sense notion that you should be advised of the risks of treatment before you decide to go ahead with it. I can't tell from your post if your first doctor gave you this info.
Establishing liability (does anyone owe you anything?) is only Part I of a two-part presentation. The second part is damages. Assuming you can prove that the doctor did not meet the standard of care, or that he didn't adequately inform you about the meds, what harm has that caused you? And how much is it worth? This is obviously very hard to quantify. Complicating your case is the notion that your case may be worth very little unless you can prove the meds made you permanently worse, which is especially hard to do in emotional/mental cases. In Philadelphia, as a rule of thumb, lawyers generally won't take a med mal case where the damages are going to be less than a few hundred thousand dollars, because the cases are expensive to prosecute and hard to win.
That's a general background, perhaps not especially helpful, but it will get you started thinking in the right directions if you choose to go see a Texas lawyer.
- oldman
