On this page, our national medical malpractice lawyers will look at malpractice cases involving failure to diagnose or delays in diagnosing cancer. Failure to diagnose cancer is one of the most common types of medical malpractice claims in the U.S.
This page will look at what plaintiffs need to show in order to bring a successful case for failing to diagnose cancer. We will also look at the settlement value of these cases.
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3 Elements Required in Failure to Diagnose Cancer Cases
In a malpractice lawsuit involving the misdiagnosis of cancer, the plaintiff must prove three key elements: duty, breach, and damages.
Duty: In cases of cancer misdiagnosis, the “duty” element is met by showing that a doctor-patient relationship existed. While this relationship is usually clear, it can be more complex in situations involving on-call doctors.
Breach: To establish “breach,” it must be demonstrated that the misdiagnosis resulted from the doctor’s failure to adhere to the appropriate medical standard of care. Typically, our cancer misdiagnosis attorneys aim to show that the doctor made an error that a reasonably careful doctor would not have made under similar circumstances.
Injury Caused by Failure to Diagnose: The plaintiff must also prove that the misdiagnosis caused actual harm or injury. This involves showing that the failure to diagnose cancer in a timely manner made the condition less treatable or negatively impacted the plaintiff’s prognosis. This element is often a contentious issue in missed malignancy claims, with defense attorneys frequently arguing that the plaintiff’s outcome would have been the same even if the cancer had been diagnosed earlier.
Did the Failure to Diagnose Breach the Standard of Care?
One of the key issues in every failure to diagnose cancer malpractice case is whether the doctor breached the “standard of care” by failing to diagnose the cancer. The “standard of care” in medical malpractice cases refers to the level and type of care that a reasonably competent and skilled healthcare professional, with a similar background and in the same medical community, would have provided under similar circumstances. It is a legal benchmark used to evaluate whether a healthcare provider acted appropriately in diagnosing or treating a patient.
In essence, the standard of care is what other healthcare professionals would do in the same situation. If a healthcare provider’s actions fall below this standard and result in harm to the patient, it may be considered negligence, which can form the basis for a malpractice claim.
To prove that the defendant breached the standard of care in a cancer misdiagnosis case, the plaintiff needs to get an expert witness to review the medical records and facts of the case and give an opinion that the defendant was negligent. The expert witness needs to be a doctor or healthcare professional of the same type and specialty as the defendant.
Did the Delay in Diagnosis Cause Injury?
To have a strong medical malpractice case for failure to diagnose cancer, the plaintiff must demonstrate that the doctor’s delay in diagnosis negatively affected their outcome. Most failure-to-diagnose cancer cases involve some degree of delay in the diagnosis.
Consider this common scenario: Lets say John goes to his doctor and gets a CT chest scan in August 2024. The CT shows a mass in his lung that is possibly cancer but the doctor doesn’t do any follow up. A year later, in August 2025, John returns for another CT scan which shows the mass has grown. This time the doctor refers him to a lung cancer specialist and he is diagnosed with advanced lung cancer. The doctor’s negligent failure to diagnose the lung cancer in August 2024 led to a one-year delay in its diagnosis.
In this scenario, John will need to prove that the one-year delay in diagnosing his lung cancer had harmful consequences. He must show that if his doctor had diagnosed the cancer a year earlier, his treatment options and prognosis would have been significantly better. On the other hand, John’s doctor may argue that the one-year delay did not alter the outcome, claiming that John would have required the same treatment even if the cancer had been diagnosed earlier.
Common Types of Failure to Diagnose Cancer Cases
There are certain types of cancer that we see most commonly in failure to diagnose malpractice cases. These are generally the more common types of cancer overall (e.g., breast, colon, lung, etc.). These are at the center of most failure to diagnose cases both because the raw numbers of people who get these types of cancer, and because the medical community has developed clear screening procedures for identifying them.
Below is a brief discussion of medical malpractice claims based on failure to diagnose some of these specific types of cancer.
Failure to Diagnose Breast Cancer: Breast cancer accounts for more failure to diagnose malpractice cases than any other type of cancer by a very wide margin. Why? Two reasons. First, breast cancer is a very common type of cancer so there are hundreds of thousands of cases to be diagnosed every year.
The second reason is because breast cancer is relatively easy to diagnose compared to other cancer types. Also, the medical community has a very well developed and effective system for screening and diagnosing breast cancer. Woman get manual breast exams and annual mammograms from their OB/GYNs. When done correctly, these tools are very effective at diagnosing breast cancer so when a case does not get diagnosed it is usually because of negligent care.
Failure to Diagnose Colon Cancer: Colon cancer is frequently involved in failure to diagnose malpractice cases for many of the same reasons as breast cancer. It is a very common type of cancer, so there are lot more cases every year. Also, the colonoscopy is a very effective tool for diagnosing colon cancer.
Failure to diagnose colon cancer cases are not always the best medical malpractice claims because unlike breast cancer and other cancer types, colon cancer is usually very slow in its progression. A 1-year delay in breast or lung cancer can make a huge difference in outcomes. But a 1-year delay in diagnosing colon cancer probably won’t make much difference. Most colon cancer misdiagnosis cases involve very long delays of over several years.
Failure to Diagnose Lung Cancer: Lung cancer is also very common in the world of cancer, so we see it in medical malpractice cases just based on raw numbers. Diagnosing lung cancer is not as straightforward as breast or colon cancer. The initial diagnosis of lung cancer is usually in the hands of a radiologist who is interpreting a CT scan image. For that reason, most lung cancer misdiagnosis cases are radiology claims.
Settlement Value of Failure to Diagnose Cancer Cases
The median verdict in cancer-related malpractice cases is $1.75 million, while the average verdict is significantly higher, though exact statistics are not available. Most of these cases involve misdiagnosis.
However, median or average verdicts don’t provide a clear picture of the settlement compensation you might expect for your claim. Reviewing average settlement payouts for specific types of cancer misdiagnosis, as outlined below, can offer more insight into the potential value of your case. Ultimately, though, the settlement amount in a cancer misdiagnosis case depends heavily on the unique facts of the situation.
Based on our own experience handling all types of medical malpractice cases, we can say that failure to diagnose cancer cases tend to have a somewhat lower average value compared to other malpractice claims. There are several reasons for this. For starters, the plaintiffs in these cases are often older rather than younger. The second reason is that these cases usually involve some type of delay in diagnosing the cancer.
$9,000,000 Settlement (New York 2024): Lawsuit alleged that a radiologist negligently failed to identify a mass in a woman’s breast as cancer, causing a delay in the diagnosis and treatment of her breast cancer. The plaintiffs contended the defendants failed to timely diagnose and treat her breast cancer, failed to provide informed consent and failed to provide the applicable standard of care. As a result of the delay, the cancer spread to the lymph nodes and progressed from stage 1 to stage 3.
$1,375,000 Settlement (Pennsylvania 2024): The decedent had previously had a cancerous rectal tumor removed and was under the care and monitoring of the defendant for several years afterwards. After he died from undiagnosed colorectal cancer, his estate brought a wrongful death lawsuit against the defendants with allegations that the defendants failed timely diagnose and treat his over a 5 year period, failed to properly follow up with his care, ignored the fact that he was high risk patient due to his family medical history and his own prior history.
$2,000,000 Settlement (New York 2024): Woman was diagnosed with early stage breast cancer and she opted for a lumpectomy. The post-operative MRI was interpreted as normal, but it later turned out that she had another cancerous lump in the other breast. By the time that was eventually diagnosed the cancer had advanced significantly and she had to have double mastectomies and reconstruction surgery. She brought a lawsuit against the radiologist for negligently failing to diagnose the cancer in the MRI.
$4,500,000 Settlement (Illinois 2023): A urologist referred a patient to a radiologist for abdominal CT scans. The radiologist correctly identified what appeared to be colon cancer in the images but did not directly notify the patient or the urologist. Instead, the radiologist included the finding on the second page of the report and faxed it to the urologist. Although the urologist received the report, they never reviewed the second page. This particular communication failure resulted in a 19-month delay in diagnosis.
$18,000,000 Verdict (Pennsylvania 2022): A plaintiff in her early 20s went to her OB/GYN with a lump in her breast. The doctor dismissed the lump as nothing without ordering any type of follow up diagnostic work. When she came back 8 months later the lump had grown and diagnostic follow up confirmed that it was breast cancer. She had to have both her breast surgically removed and underwent over a year of chemo and radiation, all of which could have been avoided had the cancer been diagnosed earlier.
$8,500,000 Verdict (Missouri 2022): A 42-year-old man was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer after being incarcerated in a county jail for a critical 1-year period before the diagnosis. He sued the jail and the doctor at the jail’s health clinic claiming the defendants failed to diagnose his lung cancer, delayed or were non-responsive to known urgent medical conditions, including smoking history, massive weight loss, chronic pain, irregular blood work and a mass growing in his neck, and refused to send him for outside treatment and diagnostics.
Contact Us About Cancer Misdiagnosis Lawsuits
If you have a potential medical malpractice lawsuit for failure to diagnose cancer, call our malpractice lawyers today at 800-553-8082 or contact us online.