|
Free
E-Mail Subscription Join our free monthly newsletter. |
|||||
| |
|
||||
| Personal
Injury News Summaries of Recent Medical Research for Personal Injury Lawyers Index of Articles - Alpha Index | By Issue and Volume |
|
| Volume 4, Issue 5 | March 1999 |
CAUSAL CONFUSION
Full text articles and references are available
by subscription.
PRACTICE
POINTS:
Medical and Legal Causation are so dissimilar that
counsel must patiently and explicitly educate medical expert witnesses
Medical concepts of causation:
1. all possible factors
2. most important influences
3. multifactorial interplay
4. proportional contribution
5. alternative theories
6. rigorous scientific validity
7. not yet established
When a butterfly tortiously flaps its wings in Saint John, New Brunswick and
causes a thunderstorm in Regina, Saskatchewan, physicians and lawyers have different
frames of reference
Legal Causation curriculum for medical expert witnesses:
1. narrow focus
2. any influence, however small
3. precipitate, hasten, aggravate
4. total responsibility
5. "equally plausible" irrelevant
6. >50% probability
7. best available evidence
Ask your medicolegal resource physician to translate the central legal causation
issues into medically meaningful questions which the expert witnesses should
address
[A] [B] [C] [D] [E] [F] [G] [H] [I] [J] [K] [L] [M] [N] [O] [P] [Q] [R] [S] [T] [U] [V] [W] [X] [Y] [Z]
