Why Do Claimants Lie?

The courtroom was impassioned, to say the least, and downright angry at what they were hearing. In our post-COVID-19 reality, the claimant in a workers’ compensation case was presenting lengthy testimony by video.

The judge sat calmly as the claimant spoke about a seemingly horrific injury. He claimed that he lost vision in his right eye for all practical intents and purposes after a slip-and-fall accident on concrete during the course and scope of his employment.

The testimony as to the mechanism of injury, subsequent medical treatment, and his inability to work was compelling. The surgical records exchanged in discovery detailed the rupture of the claimant’s eyeball, and the repair procedure was equally spellbinding. The case then entered the realm of the oddly curious.

In discovery, the parties exchanged the claimant’s past medical treatment records. Those records definitively detailed that the claimant was legally blind before the alleged work injury and that his injured eye did not materially contribute to his overall vision loss. What the heck?