News
Minor Impact Soft Tissue (MIST) cases can be some of the most difficult cases to prove and win. We all know what whiplash is, but can you explain it? Can you explain how a crash causes a muscle strain or ligament sprain, and how the direction and force of the impact can impact your client? Do you really know how the body systems function, and why the junk science doesn't add up?
If you are trying "MIST" cases or if you are settling them, you need all the help you can get. Imagine walking into a settlement conference or a courtroom, armed with solid, irrefutable facts about the seriousness of the plaintiff's condition. Imagine cross examining the defense expert and proving the basis of his opinion to be false. Dr. Arthur Croft's new book, Whiplash and Mild Traumatic Brain Injuries can help you do just this.
The International Brian Injury Association recently released an article by brain injury attorney Dorothy Clay Sims, entitled "An Autopsy on the Fake Bad Scale."
Consider reading the article if you handle any personal injury cases in which your client may have suffered from brain or psychological injuries. In the article, the authors discuss multiple problems with the Fake Bad Scale (FBS, also known as Symptom Validity Scale), a controversial test for measuring malingering.
Book Review: Polarizing the Case is a book for trial lawyers written by Richard Friedman, one of the most successful trial lawyers in the United States. But anyone who has ever been a victim of an insurance company’s tactics designed to deny or underpay a legitimate claim might also find it interesting.
An investigative report published in the New York Times entitled "Exams of Injured Workers Fuels Mutual Mistrust" demonstrates the strong bias of IME doctors working for insurance companies. It could provide excellent ideas for cross-examination of an insurance doctor in your next trial.
In the NY Times article, a New York IME doctor admits, "If you did a truly pure report, you'd be out on your ears and the insurers wouldn't pay for it. You have to give them what they want... That's the game, baby."
Trial Guides introduces Error Odds: Exposing the Lack of Accuracy in Malingering Tests, a continuing legal education webinar recording featuring Dr. Michael D. Freeman, Ph.D., MPH, D.C.
Your client is hurt, but the defense claims that his/her injury could not have resulted from the impact—that your client is malingering. Sound familiar? Join Dr. Michael D. Freeman, noted doctor, expert witness and author of Litigating Minor Soft Tissue Impact Cases for this CLE course on the Error Odds test and the lack of accuracy in malingering tests.
In this CLE, Dr. Freeman addresses how to overcome allegations of malingering
against your client by challenging the accuracy of malingering tests which
defense witnesses use.
You may have already heard about Rick Friedman's #1 legal text Rules of the Road, which has helped thousands of trial lawyers win cases of every kind. Now, Friedman provides another brilliant case changing technique in Polarizing the Case.
With Rules of the Road™, Rick Friedman (with co-author Patrick Malone) changed the way thousands of plaintiff's lawyers try their cases. In the process, he established himself as one of the nation's leading tacticians in the battle for civil justice.
With Polarizing the Case, Friedman teaches us not to fear allegations or insinuations that our client is malingering or exaggerating injuries. Instead he provides, in his own words, "a guidebook for wrapping the malingering defense around the defense lawyer's neck and strangling him with it."
The following is a review by Doctor and Epidemiologist Dr. Arthur Croft of the Trial Guides book Polarizing the Case.
The legal corner today is a book report. Rick Friedman is the author of some best-selling law books, including Rules of the Road and, the one in my hand: Polarizing the Case: Exposing & Defeating the Malingering Myth. These books are published by Trial Guides (www.trialguides.com).