Witness testimony is the most frequent evidence in any personal injury case. Cases are frequently won or lost solely on expert witnesses in DC pedestrian accident cases. While photographs or video footage tend to be more convincing, witness testimony can be powerful when applied properly to physical evidence. For example, witness testimony in a pedestrian accident case can contextualize what a pedestrian was doing in the moments leading up to the accident, potentially undermining the case’s merits if believed by the jury. It takes intelligent questions by a skilled attorney to lead a witness toward saying what is most advantageous for your case.
The only person who can testify is someone who saw the incident, including police officers. Only in a rare instance may a police officer testify as to what someone said at the scene unless it was directly related to the accident, which in most pedestrian cases is not the case. So, what role do expert witnesses in your DC pedestrian accident play?
An expert witness is a person with specialized knowledge, skills, education, or experience in a particular field who is called upon to provide expertise in legal proceedings to assist the court with understanding complex, technical, or scientific issues. Due to this expertise, experts can testify in trials they have no former knowledge of. They do this without testifying directly on the facts of the case, and they are not permitted to speculate. Instead, they are meant to educate the jury so they may return to the case itself and make a more informed decision.
These expert witnesses use physics and engineering to determine, based on the facts and evidence, such as skid marks, vehicle damage, and final resting positions, how an accident most likely occurred. Most of the time, we do not need an expert witness to determine fault. For example, in a rear-end accident involving two vehicles, if there is one car with front-end damage and another with rear-end damage, we can determine which car caused the accident in most cases. These types of experts can be crucial in pedestrian accident cases. Based on how a pedestrian was injured, an accident reconstruction expert should be able to determine at what speed the car was going based on its weight and the injury to the plaintiff.
Unlike an accident reconstruction specialist who likely works as an expert witness full-time, a medical expert is likelier to be a physician, surgeon, or registered nurse. Medical experts are among the most common experts that pedestrian accident lawyers work with when litigating a case. Jurors don’t have a way of understanding the vast majority of diagnoses you may suffer from. Even if we tell them you are suffering from soreness in your neck and back or a broken wrist, providing an expert to explain exactly how this will affect you for the remainder of your life is essential. You may suffer from permanent disabilities; a jury needs to know this information when evaluating how much your case is worth.
Furthermore, expert witnesses are a more persuasive way of explaining the injuries to a jury than the client getting on the stand and testifying about his injuries. While the plaintiff is biased, a doctor who is an expert witness is presumably not. While we could ask the plaintiff to get on the stand and ask questions about their medical records, this is still less convincing than having an actual doctor or some medical professional deemed by the court as an expert testifying in front of the jury.
We use this category of experts to establish that you have lost future earning capacity because of your injuries. For example, if you have a 25-year-long career working in construction but have just injured your back and have been ordered by your doctor to never lift anything over 25 pounds again, your construction career will be damaged. How much money would you have made in raises as time went on that you can no longer make because you are less valuable to your employer? These are questions that the average person does not know the answer to. It takes a financial expert to explain that, based on your years of education, experience, and life expectancy, you should have made a certain amount but will now make less.
This type of expert determines how much it will cost to change your lifestyle. Forgetting about the loss of enjoyment of life, which is a factor in pedestrian accident injuries, the cost of making your house and car handicap accessible is another expense you would not have to pay for but for your pedestrian accident. Our goal in establishing damages is to ensure that you do not have to pay out-of-pocket for anything related to an accident you did not cause and that you will be made whole.
Determining whether a pedestrian had a walk sign in a pedestrian accident is critical. If no eyewitness is available to testify, we must reconstruct the accident. Traffic lights are timed. So, we may be able to infer that the driver must have been speeding around a turn, and a pedestrian had no way to see he was coming when he walked out into a crosswalk with no traffic lights. Additionally, traffic engineer expert witnesses can offer opinions on whether there was a deficiency against the local government. This can be beneficial in DC pedestrian cases.
Selecting the correct expert witness in your DC pedestrian accident case depends on several factors. It is important to note that more than one witness can successfully do the job. Our firm will pay for hiring an expert witness in advance, but we are then reimbursed out of the recovery if we prevail on your case. Thus, while the client is essentially responsible for this cost, we want to be reasonable in who we select. Expert witnesses are expensive, but there is a range of costs. For example, a registered nurse may be less costly than a surgeon. With this in mind, here are a few factors to consider when selecting an expert witness for your case.
If you are unsure whether an expert witness is right for your case, speak with an experienced personal injury lawyer from Gelb & Gelb, P.C., at (202) 331-7227.