Guide On How One Can Prove Medical Expenses In Houston Accident Injury Case

The medical expenses in a personal injury case in Texas is governed in part by the Texas Constitution, in part by statute, and in part by court cases

. The constitution and the statutes in Texas are there for everyone to read and interpret. However, one person's interpretation may be different from the interpretation of another person.

The Workings of Texas Accident & Injury Case Claims

"Causation" is an important word in Texas Personal Injury & Accident Law. An injured person can recover past, present and even future medical expenses in a personal injury case, but only if the medical expenses were necessarily incurred to treat the injury that was caused by the party that the injured person is seeking to hold responsible, and only if they are reasonable in amount.

So breaking that general proposition down, it isnt sufficient to prove that you incurred or paid a lot of medical expenses after you were injured. There is another important word to consider: caused. In legal terms, we convert the word caused to the word causation when talking about holding someone responsible for an accident or injury. The focus of this article is on how you must prove that causal connection in order to recover your medical expenses.

It might be helpful to give an example of an actual Texas case where the jury found that the injured party should recover more than a million dollars in medical expenses. In that case, which was decided in 2007, the trial judge disagreed with the jury verdict and entered a take nothing judgment. The court of appeals disagreed with the trial judge, however, and sent the case back to the trial court for entry of judgment based on the jury verdict. The plaintiff, who was an heir of the injured party who died not long after the accident, was undoubtedly happy with that ruling.

But the defendant appealed and the Texas Supreme Court disagreed with the court of appeals and directed that it consider whether a remittitur could be ordered based on the evidence that was presented at trial, or if not, ordered that the case should be sent back to the trial court for a new trial.

What did the parties learn, and what can we learn, from this case?

The only evidence presented at trial about causation came from the daughter and son-in-law of the 86 year old injured party.

That doesnt work, the Supreme Court said, because only a medical expert could testify about causation given the facts of this case. It would not be within the common knowledge and experience of a layperson to connect up the conditions in question, the causal relationship between those conditions and the accident, and the need for the medical treatment for which damages had been awarded, the court reasoned.

The specific holding of the court was as follows:

We conclude that expert medical evidence is required to prove causation unless competent evidence supports a finding that the conditions in question, the causal relationship between the conditions and the accident, and the necessity of the particular medical treatments for the conditions are within the common knowledge and experience of laypersons.

The courts holding might be easier to understand if you consider that the pre-accident condition of the injured party is usually an issue at trial, along with evidence about the accident itself, plus evidence about the injured persons physical condition and progress after the accident. The court used an example to explain this.

If the injured party had suffered broken bones and other injuries that undisputed evidence showed were not present before the accident, then the physical condition and causal relationship between the accident and the conditions might well be within the general experience and common knowledge of laypersons.

Temporal proximity alone, however, or in other words closeness in time, between the accident and subsequently manifested physical conditions of the injured party does not prove causation, the court stated. It may create a suspicion of the causal link, or allow one to surmise the causal link, but that is not allowed because that is not evidence, said the court.

Referring to the holding in another case that it had decided previously, the Texas Supreme Court held that non-expert evidence alone is sufficient to support a finding of causation in limited circumstances where both the occurrence and conditions complained of are such that the general experience and common sense of laypersons are sufficient to evaluate the conditions and whether they were probably caused by the occurrence.

It often is very complicated, and we therefore believe that decisions about what evidence should be presented and how it should be presented are best made by an experienced Texas accident injury lawyer who represents you and knows all the facts of your particular case.

To learn more about personal injury and medical expenses in your Accident Injury or To speak with an experienced personal injury trial lawyer, please contact one of our accident injury attorneys.

Don't Wait! Discuss Your Case with a Personal Injury Lawyer Now.

by: Texas Accident Injury Lawyers

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