Therefore, the expert determined that he assesses that the degree of mental disability that must be determined in the plaintiff's case is 10% in accordance with section 34(b)(2) of the NII Regulations.
As part of the clarification questions, the expert referred to the content of the summary of the hearing before dismissal, which took place shortly after the accident (and regardless of the incident), during which the plaintiff expressed her difficulties and mental distress, and also noted that she sought psychological treatment, without documentation of this. Against this background, he found that the disability rate should be deducted from the determined disability rate of 1.5%, and the disability rate should be set at 8.5%.
- During his interrogation, Dr. Gorodetsky noted his determination regarding the total degree of disability that must be determined in the plaintiff's case, while reiterating that the mental disability stems directly from the intensity of the pain from which she suffers in a causal connection and as a result of the accident.
When it was presented to the expert that during her testimony the plaintiff stated that what clouded her mental state was mainly coping with her hearing impairment and the need to adapt to a new hearing aid, as also emerged from the summary of the hearing at her workplace, the expert replied that this figure was not before him at the time of the examination and was not taken into account in the preparation of the opinion, and that it was a material figure. When he was asked to give expression to these facts, the expert determined that the total disability should be deducted at least 5%, so that the mental disability in a causal connection with the accident would be 5% [Proc. at p. 33].
Later, the expert was presented with the change in the evaluation given by the neurology expert, who in fact attributed only a quarter of the pain to the accident to the plaintiff. Although the mental disability was given in direct causal connection with the difficulty in adjusting to the pain, the expert insisted on his opinion that a disability of 5% should be attributed to the accident against the background of the fact that the plaintiff had no history of mental illness due to the pain in the medical background. The expert emphasized that he had determined the degree of disability due to the mental state that stems from a response to pain, which is a personal reaction whose main cause is the very presence of the pain. Therefore, he did not see fit to make an additional reduction from the degree of disability that he had determined.
- As stated, according to the case law, the final determination regarding the medical condition of a plaintiff as a result of an accident is always left to the court, which has the discretion whether to rely on the expert opinion on its behalf, or to reject it, in whole or in part. As an objective expert who serves as the long arm of the court, the tendency is to give his opinion great weight, when a deviation from his determinations will only be made when there are special reasons.
In the plaintiff's case, the three court-appointed experts were thoroughly interrogated in the course of the hearing, with each of them changing his original determination regarding the degree of disability that the plaintiff should be determined in a causal connection to the accident, after they were presented with the relevant data.