Personal Injury Law

Personal Injury cases are put to the test by the Fake Bad Scale

By Brian F. LaBovick, Esq.

Plaintiff's and Personal Injury lawsuits are coming under attack by the very controversial "Fake Bad Scale" Test.  The test is supposed to tell if someone is faking an illness, psychological symptoms and other injuries in personal injury claims and is mostly used by the defense to help battle plaintiff's personal injury claims.

According to a recent WSJ article:

The Focus: Helps spot litigants who may be feigning their injuries. 

Credibility: Use of test has grown since the test became part  of  Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. 

Controversy: Protests from some psychologists and plaintiffs' lawyers feel that the test identifies several real victims as possible fakers. Proponents of the test see the true-or-false test as valid to identify people faking pain, psychological symptoms or other ills to collect a payout.

The story generated a lot of interest around the web. Several bloggers picked up on it such as Law Dragon's Marc Lacter, SaundersBlog , Toxlaw.com, Law Beat Comments from Syracuse University's Carnegie Legal Reporting Program and the WSJ's Legal Blogger Dan Slater  
Dan Slater's post had the most interesting comments. Surprisingly for both sides of the argument.  

Kudo's to the WSJ to include such a controversial topic on page A1.  Hats off to the Murdoch owned newspaper for putting this topic front and center.  I wonder how many news outlets picked up on this test,  I am sure that this topic will be covered this weekend in news segments. 

Stay tuned... I will share any interesting news clips that dig more into the Fake Bad Scale Test.

Click here to read more from the WSJ on this test. (Note: Subscription required),

Full post as published by LaBovick Injury Law Blog on March 07, 2008 (boomark / email).