Deposing a life care planner.
Where plans break under cross-examination — and how to prepare your own expert so theirs doesn't. Written by planners who sit for these depositions.
Five places plans break
Life care plans fail in depositions the same few ways, case after case. Whether you're attacking an opposing plan or hardening your own, these are the pressure points.
1. Credentials and scope of practice
The highest-yield line against non-physician planners. A nurse or rehabilitation counselor cannot independently recommend medical treatment — so whose medical opinions is the plan built on? If the answer is "the treating physicians," ask which recommendation came from which physician, in which record. Gaps appear fast.
Ask: "Are you licensed to prescribe this treatment? Who recommended it? Show me where in the record."
2. Methodology
A defensible plan follows a documented method: records reviewed, evaluation performed, standard categories, published sources. Plans assembled to a damages target rather than from the evidence show their seams here — items with no anchoring record, evaluations never performed, standards named but not followed.
Ask: "Walk me through how this item entered the plan. What would have to be true in the records for it to come out?"
3. Medical foundation
Future surgeries and escalating care carry the money. Are they stated to a reasonable degree of medical probability — by someone qualified to say so? Probe revision intervals, hardware lifespans, and complication assumptions against the actual clinical literature.
Ask: "What is the published revision rate for this procedure? How many have you performed?" — the second question is where non-physician plans have no answer.
4. Costing
Every figure has a source — or should. Chargemaster prices where accepted-payment data exists, national averages applied to a specific venue, stale databases, and round-number estimates are the recurring vulnerabilities. Reasonableness frameworks (usual, customary, reasonable) give you the vocabulary.
Ask: "Billed charges or amounts accepted? What geography? What year? Would you accept this source if the other side used it?"
5. Duplication and life expectancy
The quiet multipliers. Attendant care overlapping facility care, therapies double-counted across categories, equipment on implausible replacement cycles — and everything multiplied across a life expectancy that may not reflect the injury's documented impact. Small assumptions, seven-figure consequences.
Ask: "Is this item also provided under any other category in the plan? What is your basis for the life expectancy figure?"
Defending your own expert
Run the same five lines against your own plan before opposing counsel does. The standard is simple to state and demanding to meet: every item traces to a record citation and a cost source, and the expert can answer "where did this number come from?" for every line without notes.
This is also where expert selection is half the battle: a physician-authored plan walks into the deposition with attack line #1 and #3 already closed. When the witness performs the projected surgeries in practice, "are you qualified to recommend this?" is not a question the defense wants to ask.
"Every line item should survive two questions: where is it in the record, and where did the number come from."
The preparation standard for any testifying life care planner.
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