Tampa Car Accident Attorneys Review  of Injury Causation Analysis  – Effective Hogwash

During the last several decades, the insurance industry has gotten more brazen in their attempts to defend themselves against auto accident injury claims. The goal of insurance companies is to increase profits by increasing premiums and reducing the amount of money that they pay out to those injured in car accidents. That is their business model. Unfortunately for Tampa Bay car accident victims, whether driving on Dale Mabry in Tampa or US 19 in Clearwater, that means that sometimes insurance companies will attempt defenses that are not fair, but that can be highly effective.

One of these defenses is something called injury causation analysis.  Injury causation analysis is simply a term that describes an analytical process by which it can be determined what injuries are likely to result from the collision of two objects.  This type of analysis is very useful in several different types of industries, including the auto and airplane industries.  This analysis allows the manufacturers of cars and planes to predict the likelihood of injuries in different scenarios and enables them to redesign their cars and planes in order to minimize those injuries.

Unfortunately, the insurance defense industry has hijacked this useful tool to use against Tampa auto accident attorneys representing plaintiffs who are injured as result of auto accidents. Over the last two decades or so, experts have been brought to trial to explain that the collision of two cars did not cause the injuries that the plaintiff complains of. These experts use a combination of engineering and medical terms to persuade the jury that such injuries aren't a possibility. Never before has injury causation analysis been used in this way. Injury causation analysis has been used only to predict the probability of injury and never to deny that injury actually occurred. The jury first exposed to the ideas and terminology of the injury causation analysis defense industry by effective experts with backgrounds in engineering and medicine, have often lacked the tools to see through the junk science that these defense experts rely upon in order to make their claims. As a result, plaintiffs with often very serious injuries in need of compensation to pay for medical bills and lost capacity to earn income are left without adequate compensation.

After years of suffering devastating losses, today's plaintiff trial attorneys experienced in handling Tampa car accident cases have begun to effectively fight back. One way they do this in car accident cases is to address the issue head on before the injury causation expert is ever allowed to testify. This can be done because of something called a Frye hearing.

In a Frye hearing, a judge determines whether or not an expert is relying upon junk science in formulating their opinions. If the judge finds that the expert is not basing their opinions on well‐established scientific principles, the judge has the right to strike that expert and prevent them from testifying. In this manner, the jury is prevented from being misled by an expert whose credentials and powerful persuasive skills make even junk science sound plausible.

Our auto accident lawyers have significant experience in striking injury causation experts at Frye hearings. We use experts from around the country who have dedicated their lives to protecting the rights of the injured to explain to the judge in both affidavits and live testimony why the opinions of injury causation experts are not appropriate for a car accident jury to hear.

Despite our best efforts, sometimes these experts do get past the Frye hearing and are allowed to testify. In those situations, our law firm has developed tactics to use during the trial to expose to the jury the experts’ bias as well as the fallacies behind the science. As result, the jury will often disregard the expert’s opinion and may take a negative view of the defendant's entire case because of their attempts to mislead the jury with injury causation analysis.

To learn more about injury causation analysis, feel free to contact one of the Tampa car accident attorneys at Dale Appell, P.A. We would be glad to discuss our strategies and their effectiveness in achieving justice for our clients.