In traumatic injury litigation, defense attorneys face the critical task of challenging inflated damages claims and countering them with credible, defensible evidence. When plaintiffs present demands involving future medical care, work restrictions, and post-injury income loss, you need experienced experts who can expose exaggerated financial projections, questionable medical recommendations, and unsupported assumptions about long-term employability. Left unchecked, these claims can shape a damages narrative that distorts settlement leverage and influences trial outcomes.
Equipping your defense with an integrated team of medical experts, certified life care planners, vocational experts, and economists helps ensure every claim is scrutinized, every assumption is tested, and your client’s bottom line is protected.
Four Experts, One Cohesive Defense Strategy
A coordinated team of medical, life care planning, vocational, and economic experts provides defense counsel with the clarity and consistency needed to dismantle inflated damages claims. Each discipline plays a distinct role, but together they deliver a unified strategy that withstands scrutiny at every stage of litigation.
Medical Expert Witness
Medical professionals form the foundation for rebutting plaintiff personal injury claims. Their evaluations focus on whether proposed treatments and ongoing care recommendations are medically necessary, clinically supported, and consistent with accepted standards of practice. By highlighting gaps, speculative interventions, or unsupported medical opinions, medical experts help defense teams challenge the credibility of inflated care projections.
Certified Life Care Planner
Life care plans can drive some of the largest figures in a plaintiff’s damages claim. A comprehensive review by a certified life care planner can reveal excessive frequency of treatments and rehabilitation services, inflated costs, or recommendations unsupported by medical recommendations. Through life care plan rebuttal reports and expert testimony, they present reliable, clinically grounded projections of future medical needs and associated costs.
Vocational Expert
Plaintiffs may present vocational assessments and economic reports that overstate work restrictions or underestimate employment opportunities. Vocational experts, or Certified Rehabilitation Counselors, critically analyze pre- and post-injury earning capacity, transferable skills, and labor market conditions to test the validity of these claims. Their findings can demonstrate that employability is higher and wage loss lower than presented in the plaintiff’s report. Importantly, work and activity restrictions outlined in an assessment are based on physician recommendations grounded in clinical evidence.
Economist
Economists take the findings from life care planners and vocational experts and translate them into financial terms. They calculate the present value of future medical costs and earning capacity, ensuring that every projection is backed by reliable methodology and accurate economic data. Their role provides the defense with a credible, bottom-line assessment of true damages exposure.
A Collaborative Impact
This integrated team of experts ensures clear case insights and effective collaboration. Clients are not required to engage every discipline, but when retained early in the litigation lifecycle, these experts can begin evaluating records and data immediately. This gives defense counsel a strategic edge in identifying gaps, refining rebuttals, and preparing for mediation or trial.
Benefits of Early Engagement
Traumatic injury defense gains a significant advantage when expert analysis begins before discovery or trial. Engaging a coordinated team of experts early in the litigation process allows every claim to be examined with precision, every assumption to be tested, and every rebuttal to be built on clear, consistent evidence.
Strengthen Your Case from the Start
Retaining all four experts during early case development allows for immediate review of records, identification of missing documentation, and strategic planning. Early engagement also prevents opposing counsel from securing these key experts first, locking in your advantage.
Streamlined Communication and Coordination
When all experts are retained through the same consulting firm, communication becomes more efficient and consistent. Case managers coordinate across disciplines to ensure collaboration and timely deliverables.
Cost and Time Efficiency
Retaining experts with dual credentials, such as a medical doctor who is also a certified life care planner or a certified life care planner who doubles as a vocational expert, can reduce the need for multiple engagements, saving both time and resources.
Securing Integrated Expert Witness Support
Litigation outcomes hinge on credible experts. Choosing the wrong expert to partner with can jeopardize your case. IMS Legal Strategies' expert network spans all 50 states, with jurisdiction-specific matching to ensure compliance with local court standards. Our carefully recruited medical expert witness panel has supported more than 20,000 matters nationwide, offering defense teams reliable, venue-appropriate testimony.
In 2024, IMS launched a national service line, Life Care Planning & Rebuttals, that centralizes life care planners and vocational experts into one dynamic team. This collaboration enables:
- Reliable care projections based on clinical evidence
- Vocational assessments that evaluate employability, transferable skills, and earning capacity
- Expert testimony that withstands Daubert and Robinson challenges
Our analytics capabilities are also expanding to meet client demand, strengthening how we evaluate complex damages claims. In a recent webcast, Kacy Turner, MS, CRC, CVE, CLCP, Lead Life Care Planner and Vocational Expert at IMS, described how our medical, life care planning, vocational, and economic experts collaborate to deliver cohesive analyses:
“Our life care planning and vocational team reviews medical records so I can understand, as the testifying expert, what the injuries are and what type of rehabilitation the individual has undergone. I then rely on the medical experts to provide restrictions and limitations.
When it comes time to work with the economist, I share my findings with them, and the economist calculates the damages. For example, if the individual is going to have a yearly wage loss due to injury, the economist will calculate the work-life expectancy.”
Strengthen Your Case Strategies with IMS
Defense strategy requires more than isolated expert opinions; it needs a coordinated team that can evaluate, challenge, and testify across every dimension of a plaintiff’s damages claim.
- Independent medical assessment and recommendations
- Life care plan evaluations and rebuttals
- Defensible vocational assessments and rebuttals
- Accurate cost estimates and cost estimate reviews
- Economic damage quantification
- Expert witness testimony that holds up in court
From early case development through trial, IMS delivers the clarity, consistency, and collaboration defense teams need to dismantle inflated damages claims and protect client interests with confidence. Contact us today to discuss your case.
