Skip to main content

Saving Client Money While Defending Psych Claims

    I’ve been doing psych evaluations for litigation for over 30 years. During that time I’ve worked for both the defense and the plaintiffs or applicants. I’ve read and critiqued between 30,000 and 50,000 psych reports but rarely have I seen a report whose conclusions were adequately supported by the data. For the last 12 years I have been a renegade on a crusade to eliminate substantially flawed reports, being willing to incur the wrath of my colleagues by going into court and testify against other doctors. 

    As part of my service, I have been writing Apricots™ to help attorneys win their cases. For reasons I cannot really understand, most of my commissions come from defense attorneys although substantial flaws are equally found in reports commissioned by both sides. Regardless, an Apricot™ is a work-product privileged report that helps an attorney cross-examine and/or write a trial brief by describing the substantial flaws found in a psych doctor’s report in jargon-free, non-technical language with supporting documentation from the peer-reviewed literature. Apricots™ also provide attorneys with a series of specific questions to ask the doctor that results in getting those flaws into the record despite the doctor’s evasive or noncooperative behavior. 

    One way of saving on the costs of litigation is NOT to hire a doctor to examine the claimant. Let’s see how that might work. 

    Whether you are on one side or the other there will be times when your opposing counsel will have the claimant examined by a psych doctor. That doctor will write a report. One common way of coping with that report is to hire your own doctor to examine the claimant, give deposition testimony and perhaps appear in court to testify about the claimant’s psychological condition. Of course, this is not inexpensive. 

    Another way of dealing with the case is initially to simply deal with the doctor’s reports and records. Considering that the chance is great that the physician’s report is substantially flawed and relatively easily discredited, you can have me write an Apricot™ and use that document and the questions I provide to discredit the doctor’s testimony during a deposition or at trial. At that point, the opposing counsel will be more amenable to a settlement in your favor and you will have saved the expense of another doctor’s report as well as the associated costs of depositions and trial testimony. 

    Finally, I would like to suggest to you that if you have a report that you suspect is substantially flawed you can send me a copy and I’ll tell you all about it’s flaws in a free telephone consult at 844-444-8898. At that point you can decide if you want me to write an Apricot™ or go it alone based on the information I gave you. If you decide on the later you can go to my website at DrLeckartWETC.com and download a free copy of my book, Psychological Evaluations in Litigation: A Practical Guide for Attorneys and Insurance Adjusters and use some other resources found there to plan out your strategy. Or, you can ask me to write a report that includes a complete analysis of the flaws with supporting data and professional literature citations as well as a full set of questions that will dismantle the doctor’s testimony during cross-examination. Either way, I’m here to help.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Viewing Psych Reports Through A Different Lens

     I have been doing medical-legal evaluations on a psychological basis for over 30 years. In addition to evaluating patients with personal injury or workers’ compensation claims, I am firmly dedicated to discrediting poorly-written psych reports and helping attorneys see better outcomes with their psych cases. For over 10 years I have been writing Apricots™. Apricots™ are written reports that describe the major flaws that exist in psych reports using easy-to-understand terminology that provides information that an attorney needs to successfully cross-examine a psychiatrist, a psychologist or a neuropsychologist and/or draft a brief for the court. It also provides an extensive list of questions that will expose the flaws in a psych doctor’s report during cross-examination.       Through my work over the years, I have become aware that attorneys who cross-examine psych doctors typically prepare for this task by designing questions directed at the doct...
Post a Comment
Read more

How lawyers can effectively cross-examine psychiatrists and psychologists

G.M. Filisko's article published in July, 2017 ABA Journal states that psychiatrists and psychologists " are among the toughest witnesses to challenge because their testimony can have elements of hearsay as well as subjectivity ."  Filisko further states, "Bruce Leckart, a Los Angeles-based forensic psychologist and professor emeritus of psychology at San Diego State University, has developed a set of rules for cross-examining mental health professionals. One rule is to never ask them about the patient directly but instead confine questions to their report. Another is to always determine whether they have taken a complete history of the patient’s symptoms and complaints to support the diagnosis."     Read the full article here: http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/cross_examine_psychiatrists_psychologists
Post a Comment
Read more

Psychiatrists and Psychological Testing: A Frequent Nightmare

     As a psychologist who helps attorneys effectively cross-examine psychiatrists and psychologists I frequently have the opportunity to read depositions and trial records.       In those cross-examinations, psychiatrists are often asked about the results of psychological testing that is sometimes completely left out of their examinations and reports.       The most bizarre testimonies are in response to questions about their failure to administer a keystone psychological test, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI). More often than you might imagine, a psychiatrist will openly testify something like, “I didn’t give an MMPI because I’m not an expert in psychological testing.”       This kind of answer is bizarre because a forensic psychiatrist’s job is to evaluate the patient and arrive at a conclusion about whether or not they have a psychological disorder, and if so, what is it’s likely cause, ...
Post a Comment
Read more