The expert determined that a percentage of disability due to a previous medical condition should not be deducted from the disability, and attributed the full disability to the event.
- In cross-examination of the plaintiff's counsel, Dr. Lotan testified that he examined the disk of the CT scan conducted on the plaintiff in 2018 and found that the interpretation of the test findings was incomplete, i.e., that the actual findings were more significant than stated.
With regard to the possibility raised by the defendants that the plaintiff's condition was created as a result of a deep tissue massage, which caused a precentral hernia that caused moderate severe pressure on the sac at the S1 root, Dr. Lotan testified that "less, this is not the common mechanism at all, it is super rare" [Prov. line 7 at p. 40].
Later, he was presented with the mechanism described in the testimony of the prosecution expert, and he was asked whether the herniated disc was caused as a result of the incident [Proc. at p. 41]:
"A: Again, I come back to the answer about the mechanism, okay. So a herniated disc, we don't know what (it's not clear) will happen, okay, but mechanisms that raise the intra-abdominal pressure, such as sneezing, exertion, etc., also increase the pressure inside the disc, and then when the disc is already like that, there are degenerative tears in the disc, there's a piece that breaks out, it's a herniated disc. Can axial pressure in compression cause this? Yes, it can cause it.
Q: That you come and you look at the claims of what we showed versus the claims of the other side that it was caused by a deep tissue massage, which is more likely to have been the cause of this?
A: It's higher energy than deep tissue massage, there are descriptions of cervical manipulations that can cause injuries and not the lumbar spine is less, the lumbar spine is hard for such external interventions," he said.
Dr. Lotan was later asked about the documentation of the plaintiff's fall and blow to the tailbone from June 27, 2016, and the question of the causal connection to the plaintiff's condition, and he replied that it is not possible to link the said event to the result of a herniated disc with nerve pressure. He clarified that a herniated disc is an acute and usually dramatic event that causes persistent pain, and the fact that there is no sequence of documentation to support this indicates that "it is not the same event."
- During his interrogation by the defendant's counsel, Dr. Lotan clarified that he had stated in the opinion that the jump was about 40 centimeters high according to an estimate based on what the plaintiff demonstrated to him, who did not measure the height of the jump, but rather based on her impression that it was a significant jump for the purpose of the matter. As to the time gap between the date of the incident and the date on which the plaintiff first sought medical treatment, he replied that it was a matter of pain that developed gradually [Prov. at p. 45]:
"So in cases of a herniated disc, quite a few percent, it's common, okay, people at first complain of severe back pain because that's the manifestation of the nolar tear of the disc sheath, and then someday these pains also get better . And there is a radiation that the contents of the disc break out and press on the root, so there are also those, there is a bi-phase mechanism of pain development, it's not in one fell swoop with the radical pain."