Legal Question in Legal Ethics in Pennsylvania

Possible, but more information would be needed to determine whether you have a case. Secondly, it would depend on when this happened as well. Notices need sent out quickly if you plan to sue a government entity and only certain situations qualify to be able to sue any part of the government.

If you would be able to sue, this would be under a claim for negligence. For a negligence claim, two things need to be proved. First, you would need to prove that they did not uphold the normal standard of care. It sounds like you may be able to meet this requirement as I do not believe it to be proper for them to hang up during a medical emergency. The second thing that needs to be proven is that there was some sort of injury due to the negligence. For example, did the delay in receiving medical treatment cause any additional injury, did the delay cause the situation to worsen, and do we have medical experts to establish this.. For a case such as this, we would need to hire a medical expert to establish that the delay did in fact cause injury that would not have been present had the person received a timely response. Hiring such an expert can cost a good bit of money so if an injury exists because of the treatment delay, the injury would have to be sufficient to justify the cost of litigation. For example, if the delay did not cause any permanent damage/injury and only caused some minor issue that was quickly dealt with, then it wouldn't likely be cost effective to litigate the case and you may have trouble finding counsel to represent you in this as the attorney generally pays the expert fees, so most attorneys are not going to take a case unless they are reasonably certain that the case is worth more than the cost of litigating the case.

With all that said, it is impossible to give you a specific answer as to whether you have a case or not without knowing much more information. If you would like to pursue this matter, I would suggest that you contact a lawyer that handles personal injury matters. If you would like to discuss this further, please feel free to call my office for a free phone consultation.

Justin C. Gearty Jr., Esquire

Owner and Managing Attorney

Gearty Law Offices

Phone: 717-490-6325

Email: [email protected]

Website: www.GeartyLawOffices.com