Somatic Symptoms and Psychiatric Causation in New York Personal Injury Cases

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

A plaintiff can have genuine, disabling symptoms without a proportionate organic lesion. That is not unusual in psychiatric injury litigation. The contested question is not whether the suffering is real. It is whether the accident caused it, aggravated it, or merely coincided with it. The causation question New York causation analysis asks whether the defendant’s conduct was a substantial factor in producing the claimed injury. In psychiatric cases involving pain, dizziness, fatigue, gastrointestinal complaints, or other somatic symptoms, the examiner must separate several questions that are often collapsed: - What symptoms does the plaintiff experience? - What organic basis, if any, has bee

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