You went to a doctor, a hospital, or a clinic expecting to get better. Instead, something went wrong. Maybe a diagnosis was missed and your condition got worse. Maybe a surgical procedure caused new harm. Maybe a medication error sent you back to the emergency room.
You are not sure if what happened was a mistake, negligence, or just an unfortunate result. That uncertainty is one of the hardest parts.
The Law Offices of Adrianos Facchetti is a trusted Burbank personal injury lawyer represents patients and families in Burbank and across Los Angeles County who believe a medical provider caused serious harm through negligence. We review the medical records, work with independent experts, and tell you honestly what we believe happened and what your options are.
Free, confidential consultation. Call (626) 793-8607, available 24 hours a day.
What Is Medical Malpractice and What Is Just a Bad Outcome?
This is the question most patients ask first, and it is the right one to start with.
Not every bad medical outcome is malpractice. Medicine involves uncertainty. Complications can happen even when a doctor does everything correctly. A patient can deteriorate despite proper treatment. A surgery can carry risks that materialize even in skilled hands.
Medical malpractice is something different. It occurs when a healthcare provider fails to meet the accepted standard of care, meaning they did not do what a reasonably competent provider with similar training and experience would have done under the same circumstances, and that failure directly caused the patient’s harm.
Four elements must be present for a valid medical malpractice claim in California:
- Duty – the provider owed the patient a duty of care (established when a treatment relationship exists)
- Breach – the provider failed to meet the accepted standard of care
- Causation – that failure directly caused the patient’s injury
- Damages – the patient suffered actual harm as a result
If you are not sure whether what happened to you meets this standard, that is exactly what a free consultation is for. You do not need to know the answer before you call.
Common Types of Medical Malpractice Cases We Handle
Misdiagnosis and Delayed Diagnosis
A missed or delayed diagnosis can allow a serious condition to progress unchecked. Cancer, heart disease, stroke, infections, and autoimmune conditions are among the most common misdiagnosis cases we see. When a doctor fails to order the right tests, dismisses a patient’s reported symptoms, or misreads test results, patients suffer harm that could have been prevented with a correct and timely diagnosis.
Surgical Errors
Surgical errors range from wrong-site surgery (operating on the wrong body part or the wrong patient) to retained foreign objects left inside the body after a procedure. Other examples include accidental damage to surrounding organs, nerves, or blood vessels; anesthesia errors before or during surgery; and inadequate post-operative monitoring that allows complications to escalate.
Medication Errors
Medication errors are more common than most patients realize. They include prescribing the wrong drug, prescribing the correct drug at the wrong dosage, failing to identify dangerous drug interactions, dispensing errors by a pharmacy, and administering a medication the patient is known to be allergic to.
Birth Injuries
Birth injuries can affect the child, the mother, or both. They include cerebral palsy from oxygen deprivation during delivery, brachial plexus injuries from improper use of forceps or vacuum extraction, failure to perform a timely cesarean section when fetal distress is detected, and injuries caused by medication errors during labor. These cases often require long-term care planning and expert testimony from both obstetric and neurological specialists.
Hospital Negligence and Infections
Hospitals have independent legal obligations to their patients. Hospital-acquired infections (including MRSA, sepsis, and C. difficile), falls due to inadequate supervision, bedsores from failure to reposition immobile patients, and communication failures between care teams that result in patient harm can all form the basis of a hospital negligence claim separate from a claim against a treating physician.
Anesthesia Errors
Anesthesia errors can have catastrophic consequences, including brain injury, awareness during surgery (the patient regains consciousness during a procedure), respiratory failure, and death. Anesthesiologists are responsible for reviewing a patient’s full medical history before administering anesthesia and monitoring the patient throughout the procedure.
What Should You Do If You Suspect Medical Negligence?
The steps you take in the first days and weeks after a suspected medical error can significantly affect your ability to pursue a claim. Here is a practical sequence:
- Request all medical records immediately. You have a legal right to your complete medical records under California Health and Safety Code § 123111. Request everything — physician notes, nursing notes, lab results, imaging, surgical reports, discharge summaries, and medication administration records. Do this before records are amended or consolidated.
- Write a detailed timeline. Write down everything you remember: dates of appointments, what you were told, what you were not told, names of providers, and the sequence of events. Memory fades quickly. Document while the details are fresh.
- Preserve all discharge paperwork and prescriptions. Do not discard any written instructions, prescription bottles, appointment summaries, or billing statements.
- Do not sign anything from the hospital or their insurer. Hospitals sometimes approach patients early with settlement offers or requests to sign medical authorizations. Do not sign anything before speaking with a lawyer.
- Look up the provider’s Medical Board history. The Medical Board of California allows anyone to check a physician’s license status and any prior disciplinary actions.
- Call a medical malpractice lawyer. A lawyer can order an independent expert review of your records before you decide whether to pursue a claim. This review is confidential and carries no obligation.
Who Can Be Held Responsible?
Medical malpractice claims are not limited to the treating physician. Depending on how the harm occurred, multiple parties may share responsibility:
- Physicians and surgeons – including attending physicians, hospitalists, and specialists
- Nurses and nursing staff – for failure to monitor, failure to report, or medication administration errors
- Anesthesiologists – for pre-operative screening failures, dosage errors, and intraoperative monitoring failures
- Radiologists and pathologists – for misread imaging or lab results that led to a misdiagnosis
- Pharmacists – for dispensing errors
- Hospitals and health systems – for systemic failures, inadequate staffing, credentialing failures, or institutional policies that contributed to patient harm
- Medical groups and outpatient clinics – including urgent care centers and specialty practices
- Dentists and oral surgeons – for negligent procedures, anesthesia errors, or failure to diagnose oral cancers
In Burbank and the surrounding LA County area, cases arising from care at Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center, Adventist Health Glendale, and USC Verdugo Hills Hospital are among the most common we see. We are familiar with the records request procedures and staffing structures at each facility.
California Medical Malpractice Laws You Should Know
Statute of Limitations – CCP § 340.5
California Code of Civil Procedure § 340.5 sets the filing deadline for medical malpractice claims. You must file within three years of the date of the negligent act or omission or within one year of the date you discovered or reasonably should have discovered, the injury, whichever comes first. The earlier deadline controls. For cases involving a foreign object left in the body, the one-year clock runs from the date of discovery only.
For minors, different rules apply, the deadline is generally tolled until the child’s eighth birthday for injuries that occurred before age six.
For government-owned hospitals, LA County hospitals, public university medical centers, and other government-operated facilities, you must file a government tort claim within six months under Government Code § 911.2 before you can file a lawsuit. Missing this window almost always ends the case.
Do not wait to call a lawyer. The deadlines in medical malpractice cases are strict and not easily extended.
California’s Expert Witness Requirement
California law requires that a qualified medical expert testify in support of a medical malpractice claim. Under California Code of Civil Procedure § 2034, this expert must be someone with sufficient knowledge, training, and experience in the same field as the defendant provider to opine on what the standard of care required and how the defendant deviated from it. Finding, retaining, and preparing the right expert is one of the most important things a medical malpractice lawyer does.
What Compensation May Be Available?
Compensation in a medical malpractice case falls into two categories.
Economic damages are the actual, measurable financial losses caused by the negligence: all past and future medical expenses (including additional treatment required to correct the original error), lost wages and loss of future earning capacity, rehabilitation and therapy costs, home modifications or assistive devices required by a new disability, and long-term care costs for catastrophic injuries.
Non-economic damages compensate for the personal impact: physical pain, emotional suffering, loss of enjoyment of life, loss of consortium, and disfigurement or scarring. These are subject to California’s MICRA cap ($390,000 for non-death cases as of 2026).
Wrongful death damages, if the negligence caused a patient’s death, surviving spouses, domestic partners, children, and certain dependents may pursue a claim under California Code of Civil Procedure § 377.60. Recoverable damages include financial support the decedent would have provided and loss of companionship.
Punitive damages are available in rare cases where the provider’s conduct rose to the level of fraud, malice, or reckless disregard for the patient’s safety under California Civil Code § 3294.
How We Investigate Medical Malpractice Cases
Medical malpractice cases are among the most complex in personal injury law. Hospitals have legal teams working to protect the facility from the moment a complaint is filed. Here is what we do to build a case.
We start by reviewing the complete medical record, not just the discharge summary. That means physician notes, nursing notes, medication administration records, imaging reports, lab results, and all internal communications related to the patient’s care. Gaps in documentation, late entries, and amended notes are themselves evidence.
We retain independent medical experts in the relevant specialty to review the records and provide an opinion on whether the standard of care was met. We do not use generalist experts for specialist cases, the expert’s background must match the defendant provider’s field.
We obtain the facility’s incident reports, staffing logs, and complaint history through discovery. Facilities with patterns of prior complaints or state citations are significantly more exposed in litigation.
We work on contingency, no upfront cost, no hourly fees, no payment at all unless we recover compensation for you.
Meet Your Burbank Medical Malpractice Attorney
Adrianos Facchetti has been licensed to practice law in California since 2006 (State Bar No. 243213) and has handled more than 1,000 personal injury cases across Los Angeles County. He is rated Avvo 10.0 Top Attorney, holds a Martindale-Hubbell AV Preeminent® 2025 designation, is BBB-accredited, and was voted MyBurbank’s Best 2025.
Ready to Talk? Here Is How to Reach Us.
If you believe a doctor, hospital, or other medical provider caused you or a loved one serious harm, the most important step right now is to get an honest, confidential evaluation of what happened.
We offer a free consultation with no obligation. We will review what you know, explain what a medical malpractice case requires, and tell you whether we believe you have a claim worth pursuing. If we take your case, you pay nothing unless we win.
Call (626) 793-8607 free consultation, 24 hours a day.
The information on this page is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Viewing this page does not create an attorney-client relationship. Past results do not guarantee future outcomes.
