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How to Use Medical Experts to Support a Personal Injury Case in NY

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    Medical experts can help you win your case.  When you file an injury claim, most of the case revolves around how the accident happened, but the rest revolves around your injuries and what damages they caused you.  Medical experts can provide essential insight and evidence into this second factor.

    Medical experts can testify or provide evidence about your medical condition, its cause, and its effects.  This is often how you prove an injury is severe, that it is disabling, and that it will need future medical care.  Knowing what a medical expert can do and what qualifies as an expert can understand what you need to win your case.

    For a free evaluation of your case, call our New York personal injury lawyers at The Carrion Law Firm at (718) 841-0083.

    What Can Medical Experts Prove in an Injury Case?

    When lawyers say “expert,” we usually mean people who have some kind of specialized technical or scientific information beyond what the average person has.

    When you use an expert in a court case, you usually want to certify them as an expert witness at trial.  This allows you to get reports and expert opinions from them outside of what other witnesses can testify about, and it lets them testify based on their knowledge and experience rather than what they actually saw or heard.

    All in all, when we use expert witnesses, we can introduce their opinions and information to help us prove a few important things in your case:

    • What injuries you face
    • How severe they are
    • How long they will last
    • Whether they are disabling – i.e., do they interfere with your ability to work and perform activities of daily living?
    • How long disabilities are likely to last
    • What ongoing care you need for your injuries/disabilities
    • How your condition will improve or degrade over time
    • What the mechanism of injury was
    • How that injury could have occurred, based on the facts
    • Whether the treatment you received was adequate.

    As you can see, some of these issues do speak to how the injury happened and what caused it, but most of the other information speaks to your injury and your status after the accident.

    Having a doctor say this information in front of the court can get them to better believe it, since it comes from an expert instead of biased parties like you or your Queens, NY personal injury lawyers.

    Who Counts as a Medical Expert?

    In most cases, medical experts will be doctors.  That can be an M.D. (doctor of medicine) or a D.O. (doctor of osteopathy); the distinction doesn’t usually make a difference, as long as they are some kind of licensed “physician.”  Sometimes their specific specialty or area of practice matters to the case, in which case they need to be the right kind of doctor to testify about the right kind of information.

    Other times, medical experts might be researchers whose research would be helpful for the jury to understand a complicated injury, such as in toxic exposure torts.  It may also be another medical professional, such as a nurse or physician’s assistant, especially in medical malpractice claims against that specific type of care provider.

    Is a Medical Expert the Same as My Treating Physician?

    Sometimes your treating physician will submit reports, records, or even their own live testimony to help your case.  This can provide the court with boots-on-the-ground knowledge of your injury, your treatment, and your condition.  These witnesses might be doctors, nurse practitioners, physician’s assistants, or other medical professionals, but they still need to be certified as experts before the court in most cases.

    Other times, medical experts are separate doctors.  They could be asked to examine you for the purpose of bringing information to trial, or they might be asked to review your medical records and give an opinion about the treatment or condition.

    The specifics depend on what your case needs and what experts are available to provide information.

    Can the Other Side Use Medical Experts, Too?

    The defense can also rely on medical experts, often to contradict what our expert has said.  In many cases, the defense can hire experts to evaluate you or your medical records and give the court a competing view to take into consideration.  It is considered only fair that if you provide a medical expert, they get a chance to get one, too.

    No expert should base their testimony on what side they are on in a case or reshape their testimony to fit their party’s situation.  The evidence they provide should still be based on empirical evidence and good-faith expert analysis.  If they use junk science or draw improper conclusions, we may be able to get the evidence thrown out as unscientific, or at least have our experts point out these issues with the other expert’s analysis.

    Scientific and medical expert analysis must be based on generally accepted science and reliably performed research/testing; doctors can’t just make stuff up so their side wins.

    Who Hires Medical Experts?

    Medical experts are sometimes hired directly by the court to provide neutral, unbiased information to the judge or jury.  This is quite rare and might only happen when there is a very unique or rare medical issue at hand.

    Otherwise, either side will typically hire their own experts.  This does put their biases and loyalties into question, as they are likely to report in favor of the party hiring them.  That, like everything else in a court case, is part of the “adversarial system,” where both sides put forward evidence and witnesses and the jury decides which side is right.

    Can You Challenge a Medical Expert?

    Just because one side claims their person is an expert is not enough to qualify them and have their opinion taken as fact.

    First, there are Rules of Evidence and procedures necessary to show that the purported expert does actually have relevant scientific or technical training/experience that makes them an expert.  If their training or experience doesn’t meet the situation, they can’t testify as an expert.  For example, a colorectal surgeon probably should not be testifying about broken bones.

    Second, there are standards for the science behind evidence and reports that can throw out some unaccepted science and unreliable methods.  This often relies on consensus, which can be tough when your issue is so rare or unique that there isn’t scientific consensus yet.  On the other hand, it can be good for you when the other side is trying to rely on unaccepted fringe theories to counter your consensus evidence.

    Call Our Personal Injury Lawyers in New York Today

    For help with a potential case, call (718) 841-0083 for a free case review with The Carrion Law Firm’s Brooklyn, NY personal injury lawyers.