What Is Causation in a Personal Injury Case?

Causation covers everything related to proving that your injuries were caused by your work accident. According to Lexology, the lack of causation evidence is the single biggest reason why injured workers lose cases and contested court hearings. Insurance companies will often accept responsibility for a minor sprain or strain. But for a slip and fall, you will find they are not so obliging.

You not only have to prove that you have a serious injury, but you also have to be able to show that it was caused at work. It is not too hard, of course, to prove the injury. An MRI shows it is there. But proving the cause could be a very different story. There are two ways to go about it.

Firstly, by requesting a designated doctor and asking him or her to determine the extent of your injury. The problem here is that you do not know who that designated doctor is going to be and what they are going to say. They may even be an insurance company doctor, which is not good news for obvious reasons. But assume they are not on the insurance company’s payroll. If they decide your condition is preexisting or age-related, it makes proving your case even harder.

The second option is to have your own doctor to write a report explaining the cause of your injury. This would be a causation letter, and it has to be done in a certain way. The doctor should make clear how the action of these forces on your body caused in their diagnosis of your condition, and it’s always best if the doctor supports their opinion with medical journal articles or other documentary evidence. Als, ask the doctor to include a sentence that says they have provided their opinion with reasonable medical probability.