I’m aging myself here because this case is about 20 years old, you know, this is really memorable to me because I argued this case before the Wisconsin Supreme Court, but it’s also memorable to other attorneys. Some of our attorneys were at a conference and they were discussing this case because of its significance.
The importance of having a doctor give an opinion about future care and what kind of specificity or what the doctor needs to say to make sure that their opinions are valid and that a jury will be able to hear their opinions about future care. The defense was arguing that we didn’t make our case specific enough and didn’t have enough good evidence for a jury to make a decision.
Luckily, the Supreme Court came back and said, wait, let’s hold a, you know, hold your horses here because doctors can’t be expected to say things with 100 percent certainty. In our case, the doctor said that our client is going to need the care in the future at the same amount as the care in the past.
So if it was three visits of physical therapy a month or years, that was the same amount of care of physical therapy that would be needed in the future in Wisconsin possibly isn’t good enough. It’s probably, and then you have to talk about more the specificity of future care. It wasn’t specific saying 16 visits over the next two years.
It was more vague in that the doctor thought that the medical care was reasonable in the past and that that medical care would be reasonable in the future. I think back of what are we going to need doctors to say and what do we have to do to prepare those doctors to really teach them about what they need to say to make sure we have the best evidence to help our clients.