Causation: A Medico-Legal Battlefield

In the court room, the trial lawyer strives to introduce medical testimony as to the cause of a condition or disease. Resort in many instances is made, through a hypothetical question to a non-attending physician, as to whether or not the accident described was a competent cause of a later-described or assumed condition, or "might," "could, "would," or "was" competent to have caused it. A great conflict exists in the various states as to the permissible range of inquiry in such cases, depending upon the particular jurisdiction's interpretation of the requirement that medical opinions must be reasonably certain or reasonably probable.