Proving Medical Expenses
A plaintiff must prove that all expenses, including medical expenses, are reasonable and necessary in order to recover for them. Without proof of reasonableness and necessity, the plaintiff fails to prove causation between the tort and the medical bill. Taking depositions of medical providers in order to prove reasonableness and necessity can be costly for plaintiffs, particularly those with severe injuries requiring assistance from numerous medical specialists. As an alternative to taking depositions, you may want to try serving requests for admissions on the defendant seeking an admission of the reasonableness and necessity of the expenses. I would suggest serving these early so that you have time to take depositions in the event the defendant will not give admissions. What often will happen is that the defendant will not admit reasonableness and necessity, requiring plaintiff to take costly depositions for proof, then the defendant will not even challenge the medical charges at trial. As a result, the plaintiff spends a great deal of time and money proving reasonableness and necessity even though that was not really a disputed issue at trial. When the defendant refuses to admit reasonableness and necessity, I often file a motion challenging the sufficiency of the defendant's response. On at least one occassion I was able to get an order requiring the defendant to pay the cost of proving reasonableness and necessity if the defendant did not actually challenge reasonableness and necessity at trial. After entry of the order, the defendant agreed to stipulate. On other occassions we were able to at least narrow the issues in dispute and come up with alternatives to taking many costly depositions. I have attached a sample set of Requests for Admission. Good Luck. Download file