Medico legal assessments in a personal injury case is a professional report submitted as an expert witness to a court to obtain expert witness testimony about the extent and nature of a damaged person or medical condition. In this report, the medical records of the claimant or the injured party are documented. Experts from both parties then cross-examine the medico-legal assessment. Once the cross-examination is concluded, the court accepts the report and renders a decision. Medico-legal assessments are generally used for pre-settlement comparative settlements.
Often, a plaintiff will have a case that involves a claim for injuries sustained at the hands of another individual. If you are involved in such a situation, a personal injury lawyer can be beneficial. Often it’s difficult for people who have been injured to get access to all of the information they need to make decisions about their health care, but a legal doctor can help.
When considering whether you would benefit from legal representation, one of the things you’ll want to consider is whether you would like to use a medico expert witness. When a doctor presents their findings regarding an injured person’s condition, they must inform both the insurer and the injured person about the circumstances of the report. Sometimes such reports can be suppressed by both parties. Even when the report is allowed to remain in the file, the insurance company may not always take the report as seriously as they would like.
In addition, medical personal injury attorneys will often present medical-related medico-legal assessments of other situations. For instance, they can evaluate post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other mental health conditions. They can also provide an analysis of potential civil liabilities following an auto accident. Because these evaluations are more complex than the typical accident report, they are often used in the place of a standard injury report. This is especially important in catastrophic accidents that can create long-term disability or financial hardship for the person who was injured.
After receiving a Medico legal assessments specialist, the injured party will have a chance to challenge the quality of the report before a judge. The panel will review the documentation provided by the expert witness and make their own decision on whether the testimony is credible. If it is not, then either party may have to pay for the expert witness’s services to review the documentation in detail. The panel’s job is to be objective about the testimony, and they cannot make a decision based on personal opinions—the final decision about whether a medico-legal report is credible rests at the court of law.