Alex RKNeuropsychological Aspects of Brain Injury Litigation: A Medicolegal Handbook for Lawyers and Clinicians (Phil S Moore, Shereen Brifcani and Andrew Worthington, eds., Routledge, 2021, paperback/hardback/eBook, c.£33.00)
This relatively short (242) page book is a mine of useful information for lawyers and neuropsychologists to assist collaborative working in personal injury litigation arising out of brain injury. Logically and helpfully organised in three sections (‘But for’ the brain injury and causation, current condition, and loss, disability and impact), the book serves as a steady, clearly referenced and reliable guide to waters that are complex both legally and clinically. In a concluding chapter the editors identify that their objective had been “both to acknowledge a range of opinion, but also to be clear where we believe the weight of evidence leads. In this way, we hope to provide readers with a balanced appraisal of the issues, useful to both claimant and defendant lawyers as well as to clinicians:” they have succeeded in this goal in spades.
The book will also be useful for those who appear in the Court of Protection (especially the chapter on frontal lobe paradox, which is a very clear and helpful synthesis of the literature), although with a large health warning that the Court of Protection is a very different place. In principle, at least, there are meant to be no winners and losers before that court, but rather parties (and jointly instructed experts) working together in an inquisitorial jurisdiction whose goal is not to seek to find legal ways to turn back time, but rather to make real time decisions for the person.
[Full disclosure, I was provided with a review copy of this book by the publishers. I am always happy to review books in the field of mental capacity and mental health law (broadly defined).]
