If your personal injury case ends up heading to trial, then a jury will be tasked with hearing the evidence, assigning it the amount of weight it finds appropriate and rendering a decision based on that evidence. Therefore, the credibility and thus the reliability of the evidence presented can be tremendously important. While this means that you’ll want to ensure that your own witnesses are trustworthy and can withstand scrutiny on cross-examination, it also means that you’ll need to be prepared to attack the credibility of the defense’s witnesses, even that of their experts.
How can you attack witness credibility in a personal injury case?
There are several options that may be available to you depending on the facts of your case. These include:
- Showing that the witness has made prior inconsistent statements that draw the reliability of their testimony, in its entirety, into question.
- Using contradictory evidence that’s more reliable to show that the witness in question can’t be trusted.
- Attacking the logistics of the witness’s testimony to highlight how their observations couldn’t be accurate, such as when the witness’s view of the accident was obscured.
- Hammering on the witness’s qualifications to show that they may not be able to render a competent opinion as to the issue at hand.
- Highlighting that the witness is biased against you. For instance, you may be able to show that they have a financial incentive to testify against you.
There may be other ways to attack witness credibility in your case. You simply have to assess your options and pick those that are best suited to your unique set of circumstances.
Take a holistic approach to your personal injury case
There are a lot of issues to address in your personal injury case. And you have to be able to competently handle each of them, otherwise your case could falter, and you could end up missing out on the compensation you deserve. So, as you work to build your personal injury case, be sure to fully analyze the evidence and the issues so that you can develop the sound legal strategy needed to succeed on your claim.