What Is An “IME”?

Often in injury litigation, the defense will ask for what they like to call an “Independent Medical Examination”. The defense has a right in most instances to have the Plaintiff examined by a doctor of the defenses choosing. However, don’t believe for one minute that they have chosen a truly “independent” doctor. We routinely see the insurance companies hire the same doctors over and over to perform these exams. Of course, they are likely to hire doctors who are very conservative and will minimize the effects of your injury or attempt to say that the injury is not from the crash/fall/incident that is the subject of the suit. Call these exams what they are: “Defense Medical Exams”.