Handling "Minor Impact" Motor Vehicle Cases

Dr. Arthur Croft co-authored the very first medical treatise on whiplash injuries - Whiplash Injuries: The Cervical Acceleration/Deceleration Syndrome. Over the decades since that time, he has published hundreds of articles on traumatic injuries, causation, epidemiology, accident reconstruction, and the junk science often used by insurers and insurance defense experts. He brings it all together on this comprehensive video set. This will allow you to understand your client’s injuries better and prepare you for cross examination of the defense doctors, crash reconstructionist and biomechanist.

It is clear that you can’t get good settlement offers without going to trial. With trial experience increasingly rare, The Elements of Trial provides a concise guide for lawyers preparing for trial. The book discusses how to do everything from investigating your case and drafting pre-trial motions, to covering every phase of the trial from voir dire to post-trial motions. The book applies to everyone needing clear instructions on how to prepare and try a civil case.

Also available as an audio book.

Widely considered “the bible” of handling plaintiff personal injury cases. David Ball on Damages 3 is the first in the trilogy of “must read” books for plaintiff lawyers and provides specific instructions on how to handle every part of a motor vehicle trial, from voir dire to closing. The 3rd (white) edition, contains substantially more information than the prior (red) edition, and is the only place where the concepts of the Rules of the Road™ method is integrated with the Reptile™ method of trying cases. Trying any type of personal injury case without reading this book first is probably malpractice.

Also available as an audio book.

Two of the most common defenses in motor vehicles cases are that your client is malingering (consciously faking or exaggerating symptoms) or has somatoform disorder (unconscious faking or exaggerating). Polarizing the Case teaches you how to dismantle these defenses, and how to force the defense and defense experts to take a clear position on whether they are claiming your client is a liar.

Handling motor vehicle cases can involve a variety of topics including medicine, injury causation, epidemiology, crash reconstruction, biomechanics and many issues surrounding insurance claims practices. In Dr. Arthur Croft’s most recent book, he addresses a number of these topics, dispels myths of motor vehicle crashes, and provides lawyers with the research citations to create a killer cross examination on defense witnesses.

This two-book set provides you comprehensive advice on every aspect of a personal injury case, from the nation’s leading lawyers, trial consultants, and doctors. The set provides practical skills on case intake, claim handling, negotiations, and each section of trial, along with inspirational chapters from America’s leading trial lawyers, including Gerry Spence, Mark Lanier, and John Romano.

Perhaps the greatest challenge in a motor vehicle case is dealing with alternative causation arguments made by the insurance defense doctors. Author Dorothy Clay Sims is known amongst the national plaintiff bar as the go-to lawyer for dismantling defense doctors’ unsubstantiated opinions. Her book deals with the common insurance defenses, including: that all of the client’s spinal pain is due to pre-existing degeneration; that your client is exaggerating or malingering; that the crash isn’t the cause of the injury; that pre-existing psychological conditions are the cause of the symptoms; and more. The book will enable you to reveal dishonesty, bias, over-reaching, and incompetence by defense doctors in multiple specialties.

AMA permanent impairment ratings are the second largest driver of non-economic damages in motor vehicle settlements (second only to the injury diagnoses). Permanent impairment is also known to cause future diminished earning capacity for your economic damages claim. Despite these reports substantiating both economic and non-economic damages, few lawyers request an AMA impairment rating report on their cases. The result is that these lawyers, and their clients, often don’t get the money that the client deserves. 

The AMA Guides is the standard of care for determining permanent impairment. Owning the book, and reviewing the ways in which permanent impairment ratings are determined, allows you to understand when a client has an injury or symptoms that result in a permanent impairment rating, so that clients can be referred for an impairment rating examination. Secondarily, the book is very helpful during cross examination to demonstrate to the jury that the defense doctor failed to follow the standard of care when they determined your client had no permanent impairment.

Please note: We do not recommend the AMA Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment, 6th Edition, both because auto insurers continue to use the 5th Edition, and because the 6th Edition is sufficiently controversial and flawed, that it should not be admissible in trial.