Apportionment in Psychiatric Injury Cases

Stephan M. Carlson, MD, MBA, FAPA · Civil Psychiatric IME

Almost no adult plaintiff arrives at a psychiatric injury claim with a blank slate. The question is usually not whether the person has anxiety, depression, trauma symptoms, pain, or functional loss. The question is how much of the current condition the event in suit actually produced, and how much was already there. Apportionment is where a psychiatric IME either earns its value or collapses into competing conclusions. The legal frame New York law recognizes both sides of the problem. A defendant takes the plaintiff as found and may be liable for the aggravation of a pre-existing vulnerability. At the same time, the plaintiff is not compensated for the baseline condition that predated the ev

Most relevant service: Civil Litigation IME & Damages Causation