It was also claimed that the plaintiff contacted the General Disability Division of the National Security Council in December 2018 in order to increase the rate of disability due to her hearing problems, without reporting any orthopedic impairment and injury to her lower back, and without mentioning the travel incident. The plaintiff did not claim during the hearing of her case before the NII that her earning capacity was impaired as a result of the travel incident, contrary to her claims in the framework of the present proceeding, which are also unfounded exaggerated.
The evidence presented on behalf of the plaintiff regarding the massages she used to receive indicates that she suffered from pain that required treatment even prior to the travel incident. The plaintiff's arguments that the correspondence with the masseuse testifies that she did not receive a massage close to the incident, since the neighbor testified that the plaintiff had a "masseuse and a masseuse", while the plaintiff only presented the correspondence with the masseuse, and in any case this has no evidentiary value since the plaintiff did not have the wisdom to bring her therapists to testify.
Finally, it was argued that the plaintiff lacked credibility by providing the court's experts with partial and misleading information, both regarding the circumstances of the travel incident, her medical condition, her past, and other background problems from which she suffers regardless of the incident.
- As detailed in the chapter dealing with the parties' versions, both the plaintiff's testimony and the defendant's testimony were not free of contradictions and in some cases were not uniform throughout the proceeding, but in deciding between them I was under the impression that the plaintiff's version should be preferred. I will examine the main arguments of each of the parties below.
- The main difficulty in the plaintiff's version relates to the initial medical documentation at the emergency center, and to the fact that even at the end of the procedure it is not clear whether or not the plaintiff received a massage close to the date of the incident, and it appears that in retrospect she sought to obscure the relevant facts. An additional difficulty arises from the fact that the plaintiff's theory about the circumstances of the incident seems exaggerated, especially with regard to the speed of travel and with regard to the height of the jump in the air while driving on the cattle crossing, when in any case I do not believe that the plaintiff was able to estimate it.
I do not take the details of the above lightly, but despite the difficulties that arise from the plaintiff's version, I find that the core of her version, according to which she was injured as a result of jumping while riding the motorcycle over the cattle barrier, remains stable and uniform, and after examining the totality of the evidence, I am of the opinion that the plaintiff's testimony is sufficiently reliable. Therefore, on the balance of probabilities required, I find it appropriate to accept the plaintiff's version.
- As detailed above, in contrast to the problematic nature of the initial medical documentation, the plaintiff's testimony is supported by the reliable testimony of the neighbor, to whom she told about the incident and the injury she suffered the next day, and even before she sought medical treatment; and in the testimony of her mother, who accompanied her to the emergency call center and testified that the plaintiff gave a description of the incident of the ride on the motorcycle. The fact that in the following medical documentation, only four days later, the plaintiff's version appears in a manner that exactly matches her version in the proceeding, shows that this is not a suppressed and belated version as claimed by the defendants. As stated, during the visit to the emergency center, the plaintiff suffered from severe pain, and in these circumstances it is difficult to demand that she be careful with the record, which is laconic and includes additional incorrect details.
As to the details regarding receiving a massage, it is possible that at that stage the plaintiff believed that this was a relevant factor in the development of the pain from which she suffered, but this does not negate the fact that she suffered an injury while traveling. After the orthopedic expert expressed his opinion that it was not at all reasonable that the medical defect was caused to the plaintiff as a result of massage, the fact that the plaintiff claims that there was no massage during the relevant period in any case does not raise or lower the causal connection between the incident and the injury.