Lawsuits have deadlines, many of which expire in one or two years, but some of which expire as quickly as six months. Care providers who have been sued do not acknowledge their wrongdoing without a fight. Not every lawsuit is successful, and even those that are can result in less compensation than victims believe is fair. But if the wrongdoing in your case was bad enough for an expert and a lawyer to tell you that you should sue, a lawsuit is probably worth the risk.
There are many cases of clear wrongdoing, however, that cannot be successfully pursued in a lawsuit. Sometimes the care was bad but not bad enough; other times it did not cause the injuries in question or other factors played just as big a role; still other times, though the care was bad and caused injuries, the injuries were not severe. Any of these factors can lead to a lawsuit that produces enough compensation to pay your experts and lawyer, but with nothing left over for you. In such cases, a licensing complaint (which pays you nothing but costs you nothing) may be your best option.
You do not need a lawyer to file a licensing complaint. (You also don’t need a lawyer to file a lawsuit, though they can be hard to pursue on your own.) Licensing complaints have no deadlines. There is also no rule against filing both a lawsuit and a licensing complaint at the same time. But we usually ask families for whom we file suits to wait before filing licensing complaints. State licensing units do not always have the resources to fully investigate every claim, and they sometimes find no wrongdoing where we believe wrongdoing is very clear. It is better to have a successful lawsuit (and pursue a licensing complaint afterward) than to have licensing find no wrongdoing and give a provider one more reason for claiming it did nothing wrong.
