Puerto Rico VA & Military Wrongful Death Malpractice Attorneys

Families trust Puerto Rico's VA medical centers and military hospitals to provide the highest standard of medical care for their loved ones. Tragically, medical negligence at federal facilities can result in preventable deaths that devastate families and leave them searching for answers and justice.

At the Archuleta Law Firm, our founding attorney is both a licensed attorney and a medical doctor, providing unique insight into wrongful death cases and medical standards of care. Under Puerto Rico tort law, families can recover damages, including actual damages, moral damages for emotional harm, and, in some cases, punitive damages when egregious medical negligence causes death. Puerto Rico allows families to seek full compensation for their losses with no statutory cap on medical malpractice damages.

If your loved one died due to medical negligence at a Puerto Rico VA or military facility, you have legal rights under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA). The FTCA requires filing within two years of the death, and for wrongful death claims specifically, this deadline runs from the date of death as a matter of federal law.

• Failure to Diagnose Life-Threatening Conditions: When medical staff miss critical symptoms of heart attacks, strokes, sepsis, or other emergent conditions, delays in treatment can prove fatal. This constitutes malpractice when a competent physician would have recognized the warning signs and ordered appropriate diagnostic tests. Such failures often involve inadequate patient history taking, misinterpretation of test results, or failure to consider differential diagnoses that could have led to timely, life-saving treatment.

• Medication Errors and Drug Interactions: Administering incorrect medications, wrong dosages, or failing to check for dangerous drug interactions can cause fatal reactions. Healthcare providers must verify prescriptions and monitor patients for adverse effects. These errors frequently occur due to inadequate communication between healthcare teams, failure to review patient medication histories, or lack of proper pharmacy oversight protocols.

• Surgical Complications and Post-Operative Negligence: Deaths during or after surgery may result from anesthesia errors, surgical mistakes, or inadequate post-operative monitoring. While surgery carries inherent risks, preventable errors that cause death constitute medical malpractice. Post-operative negligence often involves failure to recognize complications early, inadequate pain management leading to dangerous conditions, or insufficient monitoring of vital signs during critical recovery periods.

• Emergency Department Delays: Failing to properly triage patients or delaying treatment for life-threatening conditions in emergency settings can result in preventable deaths. Emergency physicians must follow established protocols for assessing and treating critical patients. These delays often stem from understaffing, inadequate triage protocols, or failure to recognize a patient's severe condition, leading to tragic outcomes that proper emergency care could have prevented.

• Hospital-Acquired Infections: Patients may develop preventable sepsis or life-threatening complications if healthcare facilities fail to maintain proper sanitation or treat infections adequately. Poor hand hygiene, improper equipment sterilization, and inadequate isolation procedures commonly cause these infections.

• Inadequate Monitoring of High-Risk Patients: Patients with serious medical conditions require continuous monitoring and prompt intervention when their condition deteriorates. Failure to provide adequate supervision can result in preventable deaths. This negligence often involves insufficient nursing staff ratios, malfunctioning monitoring equipment, or failure to respond appropriately to changes in vital signs or laboratory values that indicate patient deterioration.

Our firm represents families in wrongful death cases at major federal medical facilities throughout Puerto Rico. These facilities handle complex medical cases where negligence can have fatal consequences.

• VA Caribbean Healthcare System (San Juan): This major VA medical center provides comprehensive healthcare services to Puerto Rico veterans, including emergency care, surgery, and specialized treatment where monitoring failures can prove fatal.

• Hospital Naval de Roosevelt Roads: Military medical facility serving active duty personnel and their families, where emergency response and critical care standards are essential for preventing wrongful deaths.

• Fort Buchanan Medical Clinic: Army medical facility providing healthcare to military personnel and dependents, where proper diagnosis and treatment protocols are crucial for patient safety.

View all Puerto Rico VA & Military Facilities

• Sudden, unexpected death after routine medical procedure or treatment. These cases often involve complications that should have been anticipated and managed appropriately, or failure to obtain proper informed consent about known risks that materialized during care.

• Death following multiple missed diagnoses or delayed recognition of serious symptoms. This pattern suggests systemic failures in the diagnostic process, where healthcare providers failed to consider obvious differential diagnoses or ignored clear warning signs of deteriorating patient condition.

• Fatal complications that occurred despite patient being stable before treatment. Such outcomes frequently indicate that the medical intervention itself was performed negligently or that post-treatment monitoring was inadequate to detect and address emerging complications.

• Death after medication error, wrong dosage, or adverse drug reaction that wasn't properly monitored. These cases often involve failure to follow established medication administration protocols or inadequate patient monitoring for known adverse effects that could have been managed if detected early.

• Preventable death due to equipment failure or inadequate emergency response. This includes situations where medical equipment wasn't properly maintained or where emergency protocols weren't followed, leading to delays in critical care that could have saved the patient's life.

• Fatal infection acquired during hospital stay that could have been prevented with proper protocols. Hospital-acquired infections often result from inadequate infection control measures, poor sanitation practices, or failure to implement appropriate isolation procedures for vulnerable patients.

• Death following surgical procedure where post-operative care was inadequate or delayed. These cases frequently involve failure to monitor for post-surgical complications, inadequate pain management, or delayed recognition and treatment of surgical site infections or other post-operative complications.

In Puerto Rico wrongful death cases, families can recover substantial economic damages including lost wages and benefits the deceased would have earned over their lifetime, medical expenses incurred before death including hospital bills and treatment costs, funeral and burial expenses, and loss of financial support and contributions to household income. Additional economic damages may include the value of services the deceased provided to the family, such as childcare or household maintenance, and any pension or retirement benefits that were lost due to the premature death.

Non-Economic Damages

Under Puerto Rico tort law, non-economic damages for wrongful death include moral damages for the emotional harm and distress caused by the loss of a loved one. Families can also recover compensation for loss of companionship, guidance, and the relationship with the deceased. These damages recognize the intangible but profound impact of losing a family member and the ongoing emotional suffering that results from medical negligence causing death.

Puerto Rico-Specific Considerations

Under Puerto Rico's Civil Code (Código Civil de Puerto Rico), there is no statutory cap on damages for medical malpractice cases, including wrongful death claims. This is significant because many U.S. states impose limits on non-economic damages, but Puerto Rico allows full recovery for both economic and non-economic losses. When filing FTCA claims against federal facilities, this favorable damage structure applies, as the FTCA requires federal courts to apply the law of the state where the negligence occurred. This means Puerto Rico families can potentially recover more comprehensive compensation than in states with damage caps.

Statute of Limitations The Federal Tort Claims Act requires filing within two years of when the claim accrued, and for wrongful death claims, this deadline runs from the date of death as a matter of federal law (28 U.S.C. § 2675). While Puerto Rico's general statute of limitations for tort claims is one year from discovery under the Puerto Rico Civil Code, the federal FTCA deadline supersedes state law for claims against VA and military facilities. This federal timeline provides families with additional time to gather necessary medical records and expert testimony, but strict adherence to the two-year deadline remains critical for preserving legal rights.

Expert Witness Requirements Puerto Rico follows established medical malpractice standards requiring expert testimony to establish the applicable standard of care and how it was breached. In wrongful death cases, medical experts must demonstrate that the healthcare provider's negligence was a substantial factor in causing the death and that competent medical care would have prevented the fatal outcome. These experts must be qualified in the same specialty as the defendant healthcare provider and must be able to explain complex medical concepts to judges and juries in terms they can understand.

For complete step-by-step filing instructions, see our guide: How to File a VA Medical Malpractice Claim in Puerto Rico

For wrongful death claims against VA and military facilities, the Federal Tort Claims Act requires filing within two years of the date of death. This federal deadline supersedes Puerto Rico's one-year state law limitation period for tort claims under the Puerto Rico Civil Code.

Puerto Rico allows recovery of both economic damages (lost wages, medical bills, funeral costs) and non-economic damages (moral damages for emotional harm, loss of companionship). Importantly, Puerto Rico has no statutory cap on damages, allowing families to seek full compensation for their losses.

Puerto Rico has no damage caps for medical malpractice cases, including wrongful death claims. This is favorable for families because they can recover unlimited economic and non-economic damages, unlike many U.S. states that impose caps on non-economic damages.

You cannot sue individual military doctors directly, but you can file an FTCA claim against the United States government for negligence by military healthcare providers acting within their scope of employment. The FTCA provides the exclusive remedy for medical malpractice at military facilities.

Yes, wrongful death cases require medical expert testimony to establish the standard of care, how it was breached, and that the negligence caused the death. The expert must be qualified to testify about the specific medical specialty involved in the case.

FTCA wrongful death cases typically take 18-36 months to resolve. The process includes filing an administrative claim with the federal agency, allowing six months for response, and potentially filing a federal lawsuit if the claim is denied or inadequately settled.

If the VA denies your administrative claim or fails to respond within six months, you can file a wrongful death lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Puerto Rico. Federal court litigation allows you to present your case to a judge or jury for full compensation.

Yes, family members can file wrongful death claims regardless of where they live, as long as the death occurred due to negligence at a Puerto Rico VA or military facility. The FTCA allows eligible family members to pursue claims even if they reside in other states or countries.

When you or a loved one has suffered preventable deaths due to medical negligence at VA and military hospitals at a Puerto Rico VA or military facility, you need attorneys who understand both medicine and law. The Archuleta Law Firm offers a unique combination of expertise:

• Doctor-Attorney on Staff: Our founding attorney holds both an MD and JD, providing unmatched insight into Wrongful Death cases and the medical standards of care that were violated.

• Proven Results: Over $145 million recovered for military and VA medical malpractice victims nationwide, including complex Wrongful Death cases.

• Puerto Rico FTCA Experience: We have successfully handled Federal Tort Claims Act cases involving Puerto Rico VA medical centers and military treatment facilities.

• No Fee Unless We Win: You pay nothing unless we recover compensation for you. We advance all case costs and expenses.

• Nationwide Practice: Licensed to handle FTCA cases in all 50 states, including Puerto Rico, with dedicated knowledge of federal medical malpractice law.

• Compassionate Approach: We understand the physical, emotional, and financial toll that Wrongful Death takes on families. Our team is here to support you through every step of the legal process.

If you or a loved one suffered preventable deaths due to medical negligence at VA and military hospitals at a Puerto Rico VA medical center or military hospital, you may be entitled to significant compensation under the Federal Tort Claims Act.

The Archuleta Law Firm offers free, confidential case evaluations for Puerto Rico Wrongful Death victims. Our Puerto Rico Wrongful Death attorneys will:

• Review your medical records and case details at no cost
• Explain your legal rights under the FTCA
• Assess the strength of your potential claim
• Answer your questions about the Puerto Rico legal process
• Discuss the compensation you may be entitled to recover

Don't wait - the FTCA has strict deadlines for filing claims. Contact us today to protect your rights.

Call 1-800-798-9529 for a free consultation, or Request Your Free Case Evaluation Online.

Puerto Rico VA Malpractice Information

• Military & VA Medical Malpractice in Puerto Rico - Complete guide to filing claims in Puerto Rico, including facility listings and legal requirements

Other Puerto Rico Case Types We Handle

• Puerto Rico Surgical Errors Cases
• Puerto Rico Emergency Room Errors Cases
• Puerto Rico Brain Injury Cases

Wrongful Death Resources

• Wrongful Death Lawyers (Nationwide) - General Wrongful Death information
• FTCA Claims Process - Understanding the Federal Tort Claims Act
• Standard Form 95 Guide - How to complete the required claim form

Contact Us

• Phone: 1-800-798-9529
• Free Case Evaluation

If you're a veteran or military family member in Puerto Rico dealing with the devastating loss of a loved one due to medical negligence at a VA facility, understanding the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) process is crucial for protecting your rights. Under the FTCA, you must file your claim within two years from when you knew or should have known about the negligence that caused the death. This is done by submitting Standard Form 95 to the Department of Veterans Affairs, which then has six months to respond to your claim before you can file a lawsuit in federal court.

For veterans' families in Puerto Rico, having an attorney who is also a medical doctor can significantly strengthen your case. A doctor-attorney understands both the complex medical issues involved and the specific legal requirements of FTCA claims. They can effectively review medical records, identify deviations from the standard of care, and explain complicated medical concepts to the court in a way that clearly demonstrates negligence and causation.

Through an FTCA wrongful death claim, you may be able to recover several types of damages. These can include medical expenses incurred before death, funeral and burial costs, lost wages and benefits your loved one would have earned, and compensation for the pain and suffering they experienced. Additionally, Puerto Rico law allows family members to recover for their own emotional distress and loss of companionship.

It's important to note that FTCA claims involving VA medical malpractice are particularly complex because they combine federal law, Puerto Rico state law, and specialized medical knowledge. Missing a deadline or failing to properly document the claim can result in permanent loss of your right to compensation. Given these complexities and strict deadlines, we encourage you to contact our office for a free, confidential case evaluation. Our team of doctor-attorneys can review your case, explain your rights, and help you understand the best path forward for your family. Don't wait to seek help – the sooner you reach out, the better we can protect your rights and work toward securing the compensation your family deserves.

We handle various types of VA and military medical malpractice cases in Puerto Rico:

• Puerto Rico Surgical Errors Cases
• Puerto Rico Emergency Room Errors Cases
• Puerto Rico Brain Injury Cases
• Puerto Rico Spinal Cord Injury Cases
• Puerto Rico Misdiagnosis Cases
• Puerto Rico Medication Errors Cases