A lot of preparation goes into building an effective personal injury case. You’ll need to take photographs of the accident scene and your injuries, secure needed medical treatment and follow your doctor’s recommendations and gather witness accounts. That might sound simple enough, but there are several legal nuances that can come into play in your case, and the defense will build an equally aggressive case to try to avoid liability and having to pay out the compensation that you seek.
One way to support your case is through utilization of expert testimony. But while your expert can help you prove causation, liability and damages, there’s a good chance that the defense is going to have their own experts to rely upon to fight back against your claims. Therefore, as you build your case, it isn’t good enough to simply develop arguments that support your case-in-chief. You also have to prepare to attack the defense’s claims.
Expert witnesses can be intimidating. After all, they’re usually highly educated, and their knowledge is oftentimes extremely specialized. This can make it hard for the average person to understand the reasoning behind the expert’s opinions, but you can’t let these experts get away with saying whatever they want to on the stand, especially when they’re testifying for the defense. So, how can you attack the defense’s experts? Here are a few strategies you might want to implement in your case:
- Attack their credentials: To be recognized as an expert, the defense is going to play up the witness’s education, experience, membership in professional organizations and their publications. On their face, these qualifications might seem impressive, but some of them may not mean much. So, thoroughly analyze the proposed expert’s resume and dig deep to see if their affiliations or publications subscribe to minority or even radical positions that you can then highlight for the judge and jury in your case.
- Depose them: A deposition can give you a better idea of how a witness will testify at trial, but it also locks a witness into their statements so that you can figure out if they’ll change their position at trial. If they do, even to a modest degree, then you can use these inconsistencies to attack their credibility and the reliability of their testimony.
- Analyze previous cases: There’s a good chance that the witness in question has testified in multiple cases. As a result, there’s a high likelihood that a court has made specific findings as to the reliability and credibility of their testimony. By scrutinizing these cases, you might find that there are cases out there where the expert’s testimony was excluded or discredited in some fashion, which you can then use in your case to attack the witness’s credibility.
Don’t let a bad expert witness damage your personal injury case
You might think that you have a strong personal injury case, but your case-in-chief may not be enough to win. You also have to be prepared to counter the defense’s arguments, which will require thorough preparation and attention to detail. So, as you navigate your claim, do your best to anticipate the defense’s position and devise counter arguments that shield the viability of your claim. That might seem difficult to tackle, but this isn’t something that you have to address on your own. Instead, you can work with your attorney to come up with the best strategy to protect your case and increase your chances of winning your case.