Can A Biomechanics Expert Help Your Injury Case?

In many injury cases, experts are commonly used to give testimony that is highly scientific or technical. Some types of experts are common in personal injury cases, such as doctors, and sometimes, accident reconstruction experts. But one kind of expert that many people don’t know as much about is the biomechanics expert.

What is Biomechanics?

Biomechanics is the study of how living beings—in our case, the human body—responds to, moves, or reacts to a given force that is placed upon it. In plain terms, biomechanical experts answer the question “what happens to my body when X, Y or Z happens to me in an accident.”

The biomechanical expert isn’t a doctor, although some of the testimony is medical in nature. The expert needs to understand the structures of the human body, how they are affected, and what can happen when given impacts or forces are placed upon it.

How The Experts are Used

The biomechanical expert is useful because although a medical doctor can talk about your injuries or recovery, a medical doctor is not legally qualified to say that a given force can cause a given injury (although in some cases, the judge may allow a doctor to provide some testimony that a biomechanical expert would ordinarily provide).

So, your doctor can explain your herniated disc to a jury, but the biomechanical expert will explain how, given the accident that you were in, your accident could have caused your disc to herniate in the first place.

Biomechanical experts are very useful to juries, who sometimes don’t understand how a given injury can be caused from a given accident. A jury may not understand how a wrist can be fractured in a rear end car accident, but the biomechanical expert can testify that when the wrist is extended to break impact, the force exerted on the body from the rear end collision is enough to break the bones in the wrists.

Getting Information

Biomechanical experts often need a lot of information about your accident, your case, and even any prior medical history you may have, to understand how the forces of your accident affected your body. But when they do have that information, they can be powerful and persuasive experts. They can often “back up,” and lend even more credibility to what your expert doctor will be testifying to.

Controversy

It is worth noting that many people disagree with the use of biomechanical experts. Many feel that biomechanical experts don’t take into account enough of an individual’s own physiological makeup or history.

Additionally, many people argue that just because a great number of people’s bodies will react a certain way in a given accident, that doesn’t mean that a single, individual victim will act the same way. That’s why in many cases, there may be a fight to get the testimony of the biomechanical expert admitted into evidence.

Call the West Palm Beach personal injury attorneys at Pike & Lustig today to see what you will need to help you get compensation for your injuries.

Sources:

exigent-group.com/blog/the-role-of-biomechanical-engineering-experts-in-personal-injury-litigation/

plaintiffmagazine.com/recent-issues/item/cross-examining-the-biomechanics-expert-in-a-minor-impact-trial