Expert Witness Blog

In Life-Care Planners Can Help Simplify Damages For The Jury, vocational evaluation expert witness and life care planner Ronald T Smolarski writes on to determine what care and how much money a chronically or catastrophically disabled individual will need for the rest of his or her life.

..based on current medical knowledge, the rehabilitation consultant strives to itemize everything the disabled person might need during his or her lifetime and to make the plan specific so the individual’s needs are met. Cost is established using a two-step process. In the first step, a monetary sum that will compensate for actual loss and encompass all foreseeable expenses is determined in current dollars.

In the second step, a rehabilitation consultant qualified in economic damages evaluation determines present and future values of damages. To do this, cost is given in current dollars. Through this process, future cost increases can be more easily seen, understood and met.

In Life-Care Planners Can Help Simplify Damages For The Jury, vocational evaluation expert witness and life care planner Ronald T Smolarski writes on to determine what care and how much money a chronically or catastrophically disabled individual will need for the rest of his or her life.

Some attorneys representing either the plaintiff or the defendant in such cases are now getting the expert help they need from specially trained rehabilitation consultants called “life care planners”. Life care planners do exactly what the name implies: they formulate life care plans – detailed descriptions of special damages the disabled individual suffered, what progressive disablement can be anticipated and, most importantly, the present and future monetary costs of all necessary care.

In doing this, the life care planner deals in actual dollar figures, not “guesstimates”. This allows the jury to understand what the disabled person needs, currently and in the future, and why. As a result, the specialized training of a life care planner can simplify the plaintiff attorney’s job, strengthen the case and make the settlement more realistic in terms of future needs. For the defense attorney, the life care planner can point out case weaknesses, exaggerations and unnecessary costs.

Steve Roensch, President of Roensch & Associates and metallurgy expert witness, discusses Finite Element Analysis:

FEA is applied to many types of problems, such as temperatures in consumer electronics, airflow around aircraft, and magnetic fields in electric motors. By far the most common application is structural FEA — determining how a solid body responds to various forces.

The structural problem amounts to writing down some “governing equations” that describe the material and how it behaves, and then solving those equations for the physical part being analyzed subject to how it is held and loaded. This can be done on paper for some simple part shapes. The resulting “closed form solution” is another equation that provides the answer in terms of the basic variables, such as the part’s dimensions.

Steve Roensch, President of Roensch & Associates and metallurgy expert witness, discusses Finite Element Analysis:

Many legal professionals are exposed to Finite Element Analysis (FEA) in the courtroom and hire metallurgists to study failures across many industries..Finite element analysis is regularly applied to a vast array of products when something bending or breaking is an issue. FEA is applied to many types of problems, such as temperatures in consumer electronics, airflow around aircraft, and magnetic fields in electric motors. By far the most common application is structural FEA — determining how a solid body responds to various forces.

Having a fundamental understanding of how the method works can help an attorney (i) recognize when FEA can strengthen a case, (ii) choose a capable expert and (iii) develop meaningful challenges to the opposition’s expert. As discussed in the last issue of Courtroom FEA, if a loss, injury or death is due to something bending or breaking, FEA can help identify the cause of failure and hence the responsible party.

In Lemon Law Resources: Litigation Process, Attorney Sergei Lemberg writes regarding discovery:

Discovery is the longest part of a lemon car case: it begins soon after a lawsuit is filed and often does not stop until shortly before trial. During discovery, each side asks for information about the facts and issues of the case. Information is gathered formally through written questions (known as interrogatories), requests for documents, and requests for admission (which ask each side to admit or deny statements of fact).

Discovery includes questioning the dealer personnel, representatives of the manufacturer and/or any expert the manufacturer may have hired. Often, a claim or defense requires support from expert witnesses to explain technical information or validate an argument. One or more experts might be needed to testify about the connection between the manufacturer’s and the dealer’s conduct, the defects in the vehicle, and the loss suffered by the plaintiff or the existence and amount of the plaintiff’s damages. Expert witnesses work closely with representatives and attorneys to prepare the case. The plaintiff’s attorneys may retain and ASE Certified Master Mechanic to inspect the lemon vehicle and write a report.