Home Seminars & Training Accident Reconstruction for Personal Injury Litigators

Accident Reconstruction for Personal Injury Litigators
Two-day Seminar

  • A large portion of personal injury work involves automobile accidents.
  • Automobile accidents comprise a significant portion of personal injury work.
  • Most accident cases involve one or more accident reconstruction experts.
  • Attorneys must be able to evaluate the strength of their own expert’s report / opinion(s).
  • Lawyers who understand the technical nature of accident cases have a distinct advantage.
  • Understanding collision reconstruction produces more effective depositions, cross examinations, etc.

This seminar is designed for the practitioner who wants to cut through the mathematics and engineering of collision reconstruction to get to the issues that impact the outcomes of these cases. Emphases include the value of early investigation, identification of assumptions made in lieu of evidence, incisive evaluation of the reconstruction expert’s report, and development of checklists for case preparation.

Seminar topics:

  • The scientific foundation of collision reconstruction:
    • Pedestrian collisions – vulnerabilities in reconstructions
    • Single vehicle collisions – causation issues, evidence
    • Head-on and rear-end collisions – speed estimates
    • Intersection collisions – speed estimates and liability issues
  • Evaluating expert reports and defeating “junk science” opinions
  • Getting the most from the deposition of the reconstruction expert
  • EDR downloads, limitations, and misinterpretation
  • Computer-generated evidence (animations, simulations, etc.) and admissibility considerations
  • Evaluating expert reports: yours and the adverse expert’s
  • Locking in the expert’s opinion in deposition, and exposing weaknesses in the expert’s opinion
  • Cross examination strategies and tactics

Seminar materials:

  • seminar workbook and supplemental reference materials, case studies, and expert reports
  • Kwasnoski’s Little Red Book
  • quick-reference guide for case preparation and review of expert reports
  • The INVESTIGATOR case preparation software
  • Courtroom Success Resources CD
  • “Protecting Our Highways”, TV broadcast
  • road template, model cars
  • calculator
  • measuring scale

The Instructor:

John B. Kwasnoski is Professor Emeritus of Forensic Physics at Western New England University, Springfield, MA after thirty-one years on the faculty. He is a certified police trainer in more than twenty states, and has instructed prosecutors, police, and civil attorneys on more than 270 occasions across the U.S. He is the crash reconstructionist on the “Lethal Weapon – DWI Homicide” team formed by the National Traffic Law Center to teach prosecutors how to utilize expert witness testimony and cross examine adverse expert witnesses. Prof. Kwasnoski has reconstructed more than 1,200 crashes, including multiple and single vehicle, pedestrian, motorcycle, and train crashes; he has trained with the NYPD collision reconstruction unit since 2001, and continues to serve as a consultant to New York City prosecutors on MV homicide cases. He has worked for more than twenty major insurers as a consultant/expert witness, and has conducted training for the claims adjusters and special investigators of a number of insurance companies.

He has served as an expert in several cases of national significance including S. Carolina v. Susan Smith (a mother’s drowning murder of her two children) in which he participated in the re-enactment of the drowning in a submerged automobile. He was the reconstructionist for the plaintiff in the case of Ulm v. Ford Motor Co. in which a Vermont jury awarded the plaintiff more than one million dollars.
For information on scheduling a training seminar for your officers, send an email to Kwasnoski@aol.com