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Spinal injuries are some of the most common injuries caused by motor vehicle accidents. In order to properly succeed in these cases, you need to be able to:
- Properly identify your client’s injuries
- Document and communicate those injuries to insurers
- Use specialty imagery to confirm the economic/special and noneconomic/general damages in your cases
- Better utilize treating providers and expert consultants
- Optimize your prelitigation and demand-letter strategy
- Successfully cross-examine experts
- Effectively and efficiently litigate these cases in the courtroom
This six part series is designed to cover all of the above topics and more in order to help improve your spine injury outcomes via settlement, ADR, or litigation.
The following products are included in this package: (Each program is individually accredited—accreditation not guaranteed in all states)
Spinal Injury Cases, Session One: Basic Spinal Anatomy for Lawyers and Legal Staff (115 minutes)
Approved and Pending Credits: Click Here
In this session, Dr. DeShaw provides basic information about the spine so that you can obtain better outcomes when handling spinal injury claims. By better understanding the anatomy, you (and your paralegal staff) will be able to properly identify your client’s injuries and argue their case. The following areas are covered:
- Basic anatomical terms
- Planes of motion
- Anatomy of the cervical spine
- Anatomy of the thoracic spine
- Anatomy of the lumbar spine
- Anatomy of the pelvic ring, including the ilium, ischium, sacrum and coccyx
- Joints of the spine
- Intervertebral discs
- Commonly injured ligaments
- Neurology and the spine: Brain, brainstem and cranial nerves, spinal cord, autonomic nervous system, peripheral nerves.
Spinal Injury Cases, Session Two: Common Spinal Injuries (117 minutes plus 24 minutes of Q&A)
Approved and Pending Credits: Click Here
In the second session on spinal injury cases, Dr. DeShaw provides information on both common and uncommon spinal injuries so that you and your firm can obtain better outcomes when handling spinal injury claims.
The following areas are addressed:
- Sprains and how they differ from strains
- Scientific evidence of chronic spinal pain after trauma
- The myth of symptom resolution within 4–6 weeks
- Nervous system injuries (CNS, brain, brainstem and spinal cord)
- Autonomic nervous system
- Peripheral nerve injuries
- Nerve root impingement vs. other injury
- Multiple crush syndrome
- Disc Injuries
- Bulge
- Herniation
- Protrusion
- Extrusion
- Fragmented extrusion/sequestration
- Stenosis (trauma vs. arthritis)
- Soft-tissue injuries and how weather changes affect pain
- Common orthopedic/neurological testing and what it tells you
- Facet injuries
- Spinal fractures
- The effect of spinal degeneration before and after trauma on a claim
- Ligament injury and spinal instability—how do you tell, and what is the value?
This presentation will help you better understand the types of spinal injuries in the cases you handle, and how to best document and communicate those injuries to insurers for settlement, ADR, or litigation.
Spinal Injury Cases, Session Three: Treating Providers, Imaging, Additional Examinations & Expert Opinions (117 minutes plus 15 minutes Q&A)
Approved and Pending Credits: Click Here
In the third session in this series, Dr. DeShaw provides information on spinal injury claims including information on treatment methods, supporting evidence, expert witnesses, and common defenses. These matters are addressed to ensure that you and your firm can obtain better outcomes when handling spinal injury claims. The following topic areas are addressed in this webinar:
- Treatment methods
- Treatment provider types
- Expert witnesses
- Healthcare (Including discussion on healthcare provider qualifications)
- Additional expert witnesses necessary in minor impact cases
- Common defenses: osteoarthritis as a pre-existing condition
- Imaging methods (X-ray, DMX, MRI, MRA, CT, and bone scan)
- AMA impairment ratings
This program will help you better understand the types of treating providers and expert consultants that are necessary in spinal injury cases. It considers specialty imaging and medical reports that help confirm the economic/special and noneconomic/general damages in your cases. And the use of medical imaging and medical illustrations in your demand letter and litigation will also be considered. This information will help you better document and communicate your client’s spinal injuries to insurers to increase outcomes in settlement, ADR, or trial.
Spinal Injury Cases, Session Four: Prelitigation Tactics & Demand Letters (136 minutes plus 25 minutes of Q&A)
Approved and Pending Credits: Click Here
In this session, Dr. DeShaw shares important information for successfully handling spinal injury claims during prelitigation so that you and your firm can obtain better outcomes for your clients.
Dr. DeShaw addresses the following topics:
- Assisting the insurer to set reserves and getting an adjustor with sufficient authority to settle
- Important insurer expectations for treatment
- Determining if there are medical images or illustrations that can be used for the demand letter
- The importance of having all medical bills and records the first time you submit the case for evaluation
- Ensuring you have the correct expert reports, potentially including AMA impairment ratings
- Medical bill review software
- Bodily injury software for spinal injury cases
- The best format for writing spinal injury demand letters
This presentation is designed to help you optimize how you handle spinal injury claims during prelitigation and improve your ability to best represent your injured clients.
Spinal Injury Cases, Session Five: Cross-Examining Defense Experts (93 minutes plus 35 minutes Q&A)
Approved and Pending Credits: Click Here
Dr. DeShaw is joined by lawyer and cross-examination expert Dorothy Clay Sims and forensic medical consultant Dr. Oregon K. Hunter. In this presentation, DeShaw, Sims, and Hunter share information about cross-examining defense experts so that you and your firm can obtain better settlements and verdicts in spinal injury cases.
The following areas are addressed:
- Defense medical examinations
- The defense expert’s motivations
- How examinations should be conducted and what is commonly left out
- Are there potential ethics violations by the expert?
- Constructive vs. destructive cross-examination
- Typical issues with various defense experts
- Orthopedists
- Neurologists
- Physical medicine rehab specialists
- Radiologists
- Biomechanist
- and more
- Deceptive use of medical imaging
- Cross-examining defense witnesses in deposition or trial
- Researching the defense expert
- Waddell’s test and other allegations of malingering
- And more
Spinal Injury Cases, Session Six: Litigation (146 minutes)
Approved and Pending Credits: Click Here
In part six of this educational series on handling spinal injury cases, Dr. DeShaw is joined by Florida trial lawyer Matt Powell. In this program, DeShaw and Powell provide information that will help you perfect how you handle spinal injury litigation. Powell has dedicated his career to understanding traumatic spinal injuries, regularly tries spinal injury cases, and is one of the few lawyers in America who has obtained a verdict of $1,000,000 or more in a minor impact case.
In this presentation, DeShaw and Powell address the following:
- Preparing yourself and your client for trial
- Demonstrative evidence
- Minor impact soft-tissue cases
- Low property damage cases
- Why you should try difficult cases
- Common defense strategies
- Pre-existing injuries
- Normal X-ray
- Gaps in treatment
- Doctor lawyer conspiracy
- Lack of surgery
- Over treatment
- Malingering/somatoform disorder
- Important jury instructions to consider
- Voir dire
- Opening
- Direct and cross-examination
- Closing arguments
- Using DMX in trial
- Motions or motions in limine
- Arguing noneconomic damages
*Thank you for your interest in a plaintiffs-only product
Part of what makes our materials so unique is that many of them are not available to attorneys who do any type of civil defense work, so the product you’re about to purchase is solely available to civil plaintiff and criminal defense attorneys. This product is also not available to the general public.
As such, prior to purchase we require all customers to enter into a Binding Agreement with Trial Guides that both ensures that this product reaches its intended audience and also protects us from an intellectual property and distribution (sharing) standpoint.
You will be prompted to sign the agreement before you check out.
