Life care planners (LCPs) who provide expert witness testimony must provide their professional opinions within a certain degree of life care planning probability or essentially a 51% chance or greater likelihood of the good or service occurring. In cases involving spinal cord injury (SCI), such opinions become complicated when attempting to include the costs of future secondary complications (SCs) that may or may not have a consistent body of empirical support and/or several physician specialists supporting the probability of occurrence. The present study surveyed 243 life care planners (LCPs), life care planning physiatrists (physiatrist LCPs), and non-life care planning physiatrists (physiatrist non-LCPs) in ascertaining their professional opinions regarding 13 SCs among individuals with a SCI, based upon level of injury. Results revealed that LCPs and physiatrist LCPs generally endorsed higher ratings for SCs in comparison to physiatrist non-LCPs. Life care planning in the legal arena is an adversarial specialization where LCP opinions are often contested by opposing attorneys and their retained experts when the opposition’s report(s) are perceived as unreasonably leaning in one direction (e.g., too costly to fund without validation). Being qualified and certified/licensed as an expert witness in any discipline is a privilege that carries with it a code of ethics and standards of practice (e.g., International Academy of Life Care Planners, n.d.). Triers of fact typically expect an impartial and objective set of opinions based upon a reliable and valid methodology from the expert which is generally supported by peers in that profession (Field, 2000; Hoyt Johnston Hoyt Rutkin, 1999). After these rulings, experts were required to demonstrate that their opinions were generally accepted in their field, were subjected to peer-review publication, and employed a reliable methodology to arrive at their conclusions. In most expert witness disciplines, there appears to be a gray area where opposing experts do not always agree. Attorneys from both sides will often only retain an opposing expert when they perceive the life care plan developed by the opposing side is lacking in reasonableness, overall conclusions, and cost. Marini (2012) described the possibility versus probability dilemma life care planners face regarding when to include costs for yet-to-be determined future medical complications and when this is inappropriate. As Marini (2012) argued, some life care planners may “cherry pick” one or two studies in support of their opinions while ignoring the larger body of literature that does not. As noted earlier, the gray area exists when opposing experts cite different literature to support their opinions. Deutsch and Sawyer (1997) previously established a protocol for identifying and documenting potential medical complications that are yet-to-be determined. They stated that possible complication costs should not be included in a life care plan if they are not deemed probable to occur. Physician experts are also supposed to provide generally accepted opinions in their field. However, it is unknown as to whether their opinions have been scrutinized with the same rigor as non-physician life care planners (Marini, 2012).
Ysasi et al. (Mon,) studied this question.
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