The Double Standard for Medical Experts Treating Injury Victims

Defense lawyers and insurance companies love to criticize injured plaintiffs for treating with doctors who “routinely see personal injury patients.”

We hear it all the time: “They’re a plaintiff doctor.” “They always say the same thing.”

Bias in Medical Expert Criticism

What’s hard to ignore is the irony. Many of the same defense firms and insurers rely on the exact same defense experts in case after case after case. And, unsurprisingly, those experts tend to reach the exact same conclusions every single time.

Apparently, repetition only becomes a credibility issue when it’s on the plaintiff’s side. Acting like one particular side has the moral high ground is disingenuous.

Why Injury Victims See the Doctors They See

Here’s the reality: Doctors who treat injured people after wrecks tend to…see a lot of wreck-related injuries.

There are also many doctors who outright refuse to see people who have been in a wreck (even when they have health insurance), so where do they end up? With doctors who are actually willing to see them.

What Juries Actually Care About

Here's the problem with focusing solely on bias, too. It doesn't work. Juries want to get it right. Is bias a factor? Sure. But at the end of the day, the focus is on the medicine and whether the opinions and injury timeline make sense.

For example, have a hard impact with client who has never had neck pain in their life? The most unbiased defense expert in the world is going to have a hard time convincing a jury that the plaintiff's change in condition was just a coincidence, even if 100% of the plaintiff's doctors are people with personal injury cases.

On the other hand, if you have a plaintiff who gets caught repeatedly lying and has extensive pre-existing conditions, you're not going to move the needle by attacking the defense expert's bias, even if they testify 100% for the defense and say the same thing in every case.

Credibility Comes From Substance, Not Sides

At the end of the day, the real issue isn’t who a doctor usually testifies for. It’s whether the opinion actually holds up when you apply common sense.

Lawyers on both sides do their clients a disservice when they put on blinders and act like the label they apply to the treating doctor or defense expert is going to be determinative.

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