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A textbook answer.

Article Excerpt
Never forget that good, old-fashioned research yields great results, even in a time when many of us turn to the Internet to prepare for trial. Delving into every entry on your opposing expert's curriculum vitae (CV), for example, allows you to creatively assess where you can find statements about the standard of care that support your case and come from a source that the expert cannot dismiss.

I discovered firsthand the importance of such close reading in a recent medical malpractice trial where I was opposing an expert whose credentials alone would likely have meant a defense verdict.

My client suffered from an injury to her ureter, the thin vessel that carries urine from the kidneys to the bladder. It occurred during the gynecological procedure called laparoscopic uterosacral nerve ablation (LUNA), which was intended to address her pelvic pain resulting from endometriosis. It was the second time she had undergone the procedure.

The issue at trial was whether this procedure should ever be performed more than once on the same patient. My expert, a community-based gynecologist, never performed this procedure on a repeat basis and testified that this was the standard of care. The risk of repeating the surgery was that scar tissue from the first surgery would make it harder to identify anatomic structures and thus harder to prevent damage to them--which is what happened during my...

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