Is the Claimant’s Pain Report Genuine?

Most chronic pain reports are genuine, and the assessment should start there. Dr Richard Sawyer explains how a pain expert distinguishes exaggeration…

Chronic pain causation when pain becomes the main injury

When chronic pain outlasts tissue healing, the orthopaedic prognosis stops explaining the claim. Dr Tom Bendinger explains when a pain medicine expert…

Chronic Pain After Trauma: Causal, Contributory, or Merely Temporal?

Chronic pain that follows an accident raises one central medico-legal question: what role did the accident actually play? Dr Tom Bendinger sets…

Prognosis in Chronic Pain Claims: What Can a Pain Expert Really Say with Confidence?

What can a pain expert actually say about a claimant’s future recovery, and what should stay uncertain? Dr Tom Bendinger sets out…

Masking and the Neurodivergent Pain Claimant: Why Presentation Isn’t Proof

A calm, articulate claimant in a single consultation may still meet the legal definition of disability. Dr Robert Baylis on how neurodivergent…

Cauda Equina Syndrome and Delayed Diagnosis: Medico-Legal Considerations

CES is a genuine surgical emergency that rarely presents with the full textbook picture — which is exactly why it’s so often…

Imaging, Surgery and Analgesia as Poor Proxies for Pain Severity

Normal scans, successful surgery and modest medication use are often treated as proof pain isn’t severe — abnormal findings, failed surgery or…

Catastrophisation, ACEs, and ‘Disproportionate’ Pain

Disproportionate’ pain is one of the most invoked, least examined credibility markers in personal injury litigation — used whenever a presentation seems…

When Pain Medicine and Psychiatry Meet: A Framework for Legal Professionals

Chronic pain and psychiatric disorders are not separate clinical territories — in complex litigation, their overlap is often the most contested part…

Fibromyalgia Following a Minor Road Traffic Collision: Diagnosis, Causation, and Medico-Legal Risk

Fibromyalgia following a minor RTC raises some of the hardest causation questions in personal injury litigation. This article sets out what credible…

ICD-11 and Chronic Pain in Litigation: Why Classification Matters

ICD-11 chronic pain litigation gives lawyers and experts a clearer clinical framework for contested pain claims. This article explains why chronic primary…

Surveillance, Fundamental Dishonesty, and the Limits of Expert Evidence

Surveillance evidence can be pivotal in personal injury litigation, particularly where function, credibility, and fundamental dishonesty are in issue. But footage rarely…

Single Joint Experts in Civil Litigation: Efficiency, Risk, and Strategic Judgement

A Single Joint Expert can make litigation more efficient — but where one expert provides the only specialist opinion before the court,…

Expert Evidence in Chronic Pain Litigation: Lessons from a High Court Case

Where reported disability is difficult to reconcile with clinical findings and surveillance material, expert opinion plays a central role in helping the…

Chronic Pain Without Demonstrable Physical Pathology

Chronic pain without physical pathology creates one of the most challenging issues in personal injury litigation. A recognised diagnosis confirms genuine symptoms…

Chronic Pain, FND, and the Brain: Implications for Medico-Legal Causation

Chronic pain in litigation often persists despite limited structural pathology. Contemporary neuroscience shows that altered brain networks, predictive processing, and conditions such…

Chronic Post-Amputation Pain in Medico-Legal Claims

Chronic post-amputation pain is common, complex, and incompletely understood — a combination that creates real tension in medico-legal claims. Proper assessment requires…

The Essential Skills Course: Expert Witness Training for Pain Management Clinicians

For consultant pain specialists, the challenge of expert witness work is rarely clinical. It lies in how opinions on causation and uncertainty…

CRPS in Medico-Legal Practice: ICD-11, Diagnostic Uncertainty, and When the Label No Longer Holds

Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) frequently presents diagnostic and causation challenges in medico-legal claims….

Medicolegal Aspects of Complex Regional Pain Syndrome

CRPS is a rare but severe chronic pain condition that generates some of the most contested medico-legal claims. Diagnosis rests on clinical…

Chronic Pain, Neurodiversity and the Courts: Why These Cases Demand a Different Kind of Expertise

Neurodivergence can materially affect how chronic pain is experienced and assessed. Medico-legal evidence must account for this, or risk flawed credibility assessments….

The Intersection of
Pain, Law & Evidence