Frequently Asked Questions

Medical malpractice occurs when a healthcare provider fails to meet the accepted standard of care, resulting in injury or death. This includes misdiagnosis, surgical errors, medication errors, and birth injuries.

You may have a case if a healthcare provider's negligence directly caused your injury. Key factors include breach of standard of care, causation, and significant damages.

Generally two years from the date of discovery of the injury, or from when you reasonably should have discovered it.

Medical expenses, lost wages (past and future), pain and suffering, and long-term care costs. Punitive damages may apply when the defendant acted with malice or reckless and outrageous indifference.

The personal representative of the deceased's estate, typically a close family member such as a spouse, child, or parent.

Pain and suffering prior to death, lost wages, funeral expenses, loss of companionship, emotional distress, and potentially punitive damages.

Three years under ORS 30.020(1) — but measured from when the injury that caused the death was discovered or reasonably should have been discovered, not from the date of death. The date of death is an outer bar: the action can never be filed later than the earliest of three years after the death or the longest statute of ultimate repose that applies to the underlying act. If the defendant is a public body, the Oregon Tort Claims Act shortens this considerably: written notice within one year and suit within two.

Yes, Oregon law typically requires expert testimony to establish the standard of care and how it was breached.

Document everything, obtain copies of your medical records, seek a second medical opinion, and consult with an experienced medical malpractice attorney.

Todd Huegli works on a contingency fee basis — you pay nothing unless we win your case.

Misdiagnosis, delayed diagnosis, surgical errors, medication errors, birth injuries, anesthesia errors, and failure to obtain informed consent.

Yes, hospitals can be held liable for negligence of their employees and for systemic failures in care.

Healthcare providers must explain risks, benefits, and alternatives of a procedure. Failure to obtain proper informed consent can be grounds for a malpractice claim.

Cases vary widely. Some settle in months, while complex cases may take 2-3 years or more through trial.

Oregon follows modified comparative negligence under ORS 31.600 — you can recover as long as you're not more than 50% at fault, but your award is reduced by your percentage of fault. At 51% or higher, you recover nothing.

ORS 12.110(4) imposes an outside deadline of 5 years from the date of the medical act, even if the injury wasn't discovered until later. The 2-year discovery rule sits inside this 5-year ceiling. The statute contains one exception: where no action was commenced within five years because of fraud, deceit or misleading representation, the claim may be brought within two years of discovering that fraud.

Yes. Under the Oregon Tort Claims Act (ORS 30.275), personal-injury claims against public bodies — OHSU, county hospitals, and state-employed providers — require formal written notice within 180 days of the injury. Wrongful-death claimants get one year. Missing this deadline typically bars the claim entirely, even when the underlying statute of limitations is years longer.

Yes. ORS 353.020 designates Oregon Health & Science University as a public corporation, which means OHSU and its employed providers are covered by the Oregon Tort Claims Act. Claims trigger the 180-day notice requirement and the OTCA's damages cap. For OHSU that is the state cap in ORS 30.271, which subsection (5) applies to OHSU by name — not the lower local-public-body cap in ORS 30.272, which excludes OHSU expressly.

FQHCs and their providers are treated as federal employees under the Federally Supported Health Centers Assistance Act, which routes malpractice claims into the Federal Tort Claims Act. That means filing an SF-95 administrative claim with the appropriate federal agency within 2 years, exhausting that process, and then suing in U.S. District Court — a different procedure than a state-court medical malpractice case.

Not in non-death cases. ORS 31.710 originally capped non-economic damages at $500,000 across most injury and death claims. The Oregon Supreme Court held in Busch v. McInnis Waste Systems (2020) that applying the cap to a severely injured personal-injury plaintiff violated the remedy clause of Article I, section 10 of the Oregon Constitution, and in 2021 the Legislature (SB 193) rewrote the statute so that it now applies only to claims for wrongful death. In a non-death medical malpractice case, no statutory cap applies to non-economic damages. In a death case, two statutory exclusions come before any constitutional argument: by its own terms the cap does not reach a claim subject to the Oregon Tort Claims Act — so a death claim against OHSU or another public hospital is governed by the OTCA limits instead — and it does not reach a claim subject to workers' compensation. For a death claim the statute does reach, the $500,000 cap is the statutory default and is open to an as-applied challenge: the Court of Appeals upheld it against a facial challenge in Estate of James Ritchie v. Helbig (2026) and, in Estate of Grant Raymond Fisher v. Lee (2026), reaffirmed that it is facially valid while holding it unconstitutional on the particular facts before it.

Oregon does not require a certificate of merit at filing. But expert medical testimony is essentially always required to prove the standard of care and causation — without a qualified expert willing to support the case, it cannot survive summary judgment. Reputable Oregon malpractice firms vet cases with consulting experts before filing, even though no formal affidavit is required.