Los Angeles Medical Misdiagnosis Lawyers Holding Negligent Providers Accountable
You trusted a physician to interpret your symptoms accurately and provide the correct medical care. When that trust is broken, and the wrong call causes real harm, the effects can follow you for the rest of your life.
Cohen & Marzban has recovered more than $2 billion for injured clients throughout Southern California. With four decades of experience and the Litigator Award, an honor reserved for the top 1% of trial attorneys nationwide, our skilled team is ready to stand up to negligent doctors, hospitals, and their insurers when a preventable diagnostic mistake changes everything.
Whether your case involves a missed condition, a delayed diagnosis, or an entirely wrong diagnosis, our medical misdiagnosis lawyers know how to prove what went wrong. If you believe a misdiagnosis harmed you or a loved one, contact our misdiagnosis attorneys in Los Angeles today for a free consultation to discuss your legal options.
What Counts as Medical Misdiagnosis
Medical misdiagnosis occurs when a provider fails to correctly identify a patient's condition as a reasonably careful provider would. It generally takes one of three forms:
- Missed diagnosis: The provider finds nothing wrong and sends the patient home, even though a real, identifiable condition is present.
- Delayed diagnosis: The correct diagnosis is eventually made, but only after a harmful delay that allowed the condition to progress.
- Wrong diagnosis: The provider diagnoses the wrong condition and treats the patient for an illness they never had, leaving the true problem untreated.
An incorrect diagnosis on its own is not automatically malpractice. To bring a valid claim, our medical misdiagnosis lawyers must show that the provider breached the accepted standard of care and that the mistake directly caused you harm. This page offers general information about California law and is not legal advice for your specific situation.
How Do Misdiagnosis Errors Happen
Most diagnostic mistakes are not the result of a rare, unforeseeable medical mystery. They come from breakdowns in the basic steps a careful provider is expected to follow. Johns Hopkins researchers have found that the majority of serious diagnostic errors trace back to lapses in clinical judgment rather than the limits of medicine itself.
Some of the most common causes we see in misdiagnosis claims include:
- Failing to order the right tests: Skipping the blood work, imaging, or screening that the patient's symptoms clearly called for.
- Misreading test results: Overlooking a tumor on a scan, misinterpreting a biopsy, or ignoring lab values that pointed to a serious problem.
- Rushing the appointment: Spending too little time with a patient and settling on the first, most convenient explanation for their symptoms.
- Taking an incomplete history: Not asking about family history, prior conditions, or medications that would have changed the diagnosis.
- Failing to refer to a specialist: Keeping a complex case rather than sending the patient to a provider with the right expertise.
- Communication breakdowns: Losing critical information between shifts, departments, or providers, so no one connects the dots.
How Common Is Diagnostic Error
Misdiagnosis is far more widespread than most patients realize. A 2025 cohort study published in JAMA Network Open reviewed more than 302,000 emergency hospitalizations among older Medicare patients and found that about 3.2% were preceded by a potential diagnostic error, meaning the patient had been sent home from the emergency department within the previous nine days.
Those cases were linked to higher 30-day mortality and fewer healthy days at home than hospitalizations without a potential error. Johns Hopkins researchers have separately identified three disease categories, which they call the "Big Three," that account for roughly three-quarters of the most serious diagnostic harms nationwide: vascular events, infections, and cancers.
Our firm reviews claims involving the conditions that are misdiagnosed most often, including:
- Cancer: Breast, lung, colorectal, and other cancers caught too late for the most effective treatment.
- Heart attack: Cardiac symptoms dismissed as anxiety, indigestion, or a panic attack;
- Stroke: Warning signs mistaken for a migraine, vertigo, or intoxication.
- Sepsis and infections: Serious infections sent home without treatment until they become critical.
- Pulmonary embolism and blood clots: Life-threatening clots overlooked in patients with chest pain or shortness of breath.
- Meningitis and appendicitis: Time-sensitive conditions treated as a routine illness.
If a diagnostic mistake caused or worsened your injury, our misdiagnosis attorneys in Los Angeles will investigate what went wrong and identify every provider and facility that shares responsibility.
How Do You Prove a Medical Misdiagnosis Claim
Winning a misdiagnosis case takes more than just showing that a diagnosis was wrong. California law requires proof of four specific elements, and our knowledgeable medical misdiagnosis lawyers build the evidence for each one.
Because these cases turn on detailed medical evidence, having an experienced misdiagnosis attorney in Los Angeles review your records early can make a significant difference.
Who Can Be Held Liable for a Misdiagnosis
A diagnostic error rarely involves just one person. Depending on how the mistake happened, more than one provider or institution may share responsibility. Our team investigates the entire chain of care to identify every party that contributed to your injury.
Parties that may be liable in a misdiagnosis claim include:
- Physicians and specialists: The primary care doctor, emergency physician, or specialist who made or missed the diagnosis.
- Radiologists and pathologists: The professionals who read imaging studies and biopsies and may have overlooked or misread the findings.
- Nurses and technicians: Staff who failed to record symptoms accurately, run ordered tests, or pass along critical information.
- Laboratories: Facilities that mishandled samples or reported inaccurate results.
- Hospitals, urgent care centers, and medical groups: Institutions that may be responsible for the actions of their staff or for systemic failures in how care was delivered.
Identifying the right defendants matters, because it can affect both the strength of your case and the compensation available to you. Our medical misdiagnosis lawyers handle that analysis for you.
When to Contact a Misdiagnosis and Failure to Diagnose Attorney
Not every diagnostic mistake leads to a valid medical malpractice claim, but a few warning signs suggest it is worth having an experienced misdiagnosis and failure to diagnose attorney review your records, especially in misdiagnosis and delayed diagnosis situations where timing is everything.
It may be time to call if your condition worsened after a provider sent you home, if a later doctor was surprised that the problem had been missed or mislabeled, if you needed more aggressive treatment because the diagnosis came late, or if a scan, lab, or biopsy was misread.
Our wrong diagnosis lawyers can review what happened at no cost and explain your options. Because California's filing deadlines are strict, it is best to reach out as soon as you suspect a medical mistake. Don’t wait.
How Our Los Angeles Misdiagnosis Attorneys Build Your Case
Medical malpractice claims are among the most complex and heavily defended cases in personal injury law. Hospitals and malpractice insurers have teams of lawyers and experts working to limit what they pay, so we prepare every case as if it will go to trial.
When you bring us a potential misdiagnosis claim, our team will:
- Review your complete medical records to trace the timeline of your care and pinpoint where it went wrong.
- Consult qualified medical professionals who can explain how the provider departed from the standard of care.
- Identify every liable party, from the treating physician to the hospital, radiologist, or lab involved.
- Calculate the full value of your losses, including future medical needs and lost earning capacity.
- Handle every negotiation with the providers and their insurers so you do not have to;
- Take your case to court when a fair settlement is not on the table.
From the first free consultation to the resolution of your claim, our medical misdiagnosis lawyers keep you informed and carry the legal burden so you can focus on your recovery.
Compensation Available in a Misdiagnosis Claim
A serious misdiagnosis can affect your health, your finances, and your family for years. Our medical misdiagnosis lawyers pursue compensation for the full range of your losses, both financial and personal.
Economic Damages
Economic damages cover the measurable financial costs of a misdiagnosis, including:
- Medical expenses: Additional treatment, surgeries, hospital stays, medication, and future care made necessary by the delay or error.
- Lost income: Wages lost during recovery, plus reduced earning capacity if your condition prevents you from returning to work.
- Out-of-pocket costs: Travel for treatment, medical equipment, and in-home care.
Under California law, there is no cap on economic damages in a medical malpractice case.
Non-Economic Damages
Non-economic damages address the personal toll of a misdiagnosis, such as:
- Pain and suffering: Physical pain and lasting discomfort caused by the untreated or mistreated condition.
- Emotional distress: Anxiety, depression, and the fear that comes with a preventable decline in health.
- Loss of enjoyment of life: The inability to take part in the activities and relationships that mattered before the injury.
California's MICRA law places a limit on non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases. For cases resolved in 2026, that limit is $470,000 for injury cases and $650,000 when the misdiagnosis results in death. When a diagnostic failure takes a patient's life, surviving relatives may also pursue wrongful death damages for funeral costs, lost support, and loss of companionship.
