Tips For Winning A Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Claim
Plaintiffs that manage to win such a claim have either an acceptable proof or supportive testimony from an expert.
Advantages to utilization of an expert witness
An expert can explain complex issues to the jury and an expert can explain a given doctor’s diagnosis. Sometimes the experts speaking for a given victim can challenge the defendant’s team of Grimsby injury lawyers.
The injury lawyer in Nepean for the plaintiff’s must support the plaintiff’s remarks on his/her injuries. The defendant’s lawyers hope to refute the claims from the plaintiff. It is hard to prove a negative. The defendant’s team hopes to show that the plaintiff is not suffering from PTSD (post-traumatic stress condition).
The role of the fact witness
That witness introduces the pertinent facts. States what facts must be proven, in order to show that the plaintiff has PTSD. The plaintiff’s attorney does not need a fact witness, if the therapist has witnessed an attack by the plaintiff/patient.
What sort of facts might a fact witness share with the jury?
• What the therapist has learned about the source of the plaintiff’s stress.
• The frequency with which the plaintiff experiences bad dreams or unpleasant thoughts
• Whether or not the plaintiff has what is known as a startle reflex
• Whether or not the plaintiff has experienced disruptions to normal day-to-day activities.
• Whether or not a listing of the plaintiff’s activities would include an avoidance of certain places or things.
The valuable nature of testimony from a therapist
The therapist can add to the amount of information that the defense team must seek to refute
• Information on the event that triggered the plaintiff’s PTSD
• Insight into the patient/plaintiff’s bad dreams and unpleasant thoughts
• The frequency with which the patient/plaintiff has experienced mind-troubling incidents.
• A listing of the sort of people or places that the patient/plaintiff tends to avoid.
A defense team would struggle to come up with any evidence that could cast doubt on the therapist’s testimony.
• Who else has tried to probe the plaintiff’s mind?
• Who besides a spouse might know about any bad dreams?
—The lawyer for the person that was claiming to have PTSD could weaken a reference to times when there had been an absence of mind-troubling incidents. Any good lawyers could do that by pointing to the location for each of those same incidents, or to the background of the people present during the referenced event.
As mentioned earlier, it can prove extremely difficult to prove a negative. Yet that is the challenge facing a defense attorney, after hearing the therapist’s fact-sharing testimony. A winning defense would have to throw doubt on the therapist’s observations. So, therapists can force the defendant’s attorney to fight an uphill battle.
