Imagine a fatal motor vehicle accident (MVA). A car is traveling at 93 miles per hour. The driver is unconscious or otherwise unresponsive. It crashes into another car killing one passenger and injuring two others. The driver is brought up on criminal charges of second-degree manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide and various counts of criminal assault.
It would seem to be an open and shut case – except that the driver suffers from epilepsy and the state of New York generally allows people with epilepsy to drive (if they’ve been seizure-free for 12 months). The verdict? The driver is acquitted of all charges in the criminal case.
But the driver must have been at fault, right? That’s a question for the civil case that almost certainly will follow. In the criminal case there was testimony that the driver had been repeatedly warned by his physician not to drive. He also failed to acknowledge on his driver’s license renewal that he had epilepsy and a history of seizures. This will be a strong starting point in the civil case and it’s certain that the testimony of the doctors and any experts in the criminal case will come into evidence in the civil case as well.
As a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant in any personal injury MVA case (plaintiff or defense) you’ll want to investigate the defendant-driver’s medical and medication histories and assess whether those histories could have contributed to the accident. For example, in this epilepsy case you would assess the history of seizures. Have the seizures been increasing, decreasing and were they under control at the time of the accident? You would also assess the medication history of the driver (including anti-seizure medication) and side effects and changes in prescriptions, if any.
By assessing the defendant-driver’s medical history a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant may uncover a contributing cause that’s not obvious to the attorney. It’s just plain smart to go beyond the injuries in MVA cases and help attorneys get to the cause of an accident when medical history may be a contributor.
I’m Just Sayin’
P.S. Comment and share a case where you’ve uncovered a relevant medical history that contributed to the incident.
