Book Review: Anatomy for Litigators by Samuel D. Hodge

The title of this book is misleading.  The book should be called “Anatomy for Defense Attorneys”, because almost every chapter ends with litigation tips for defense attorneys to defeat causation in personal injury, worker’s compensation and disability claims.  Overall, however, this book is a very useful, solid primer on limited areas of human anatomy, and I would highly recommend it to any younger lawyer beginning a career in personal injury, worker’s compensation, social security, or insurance defense work, or any more experienced litigator seeking a quick refresher on limited aspects of human anatomy, a litigation checklist, or a jury verdict analysis of specific personal injury claims.

The author, Samuel D. Hodge, Jr., is Professor of Law at Temple University and an experienced trial attorney in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  Professor Hodge says that he wrote this book for attorneys who want to understand the basics of human anatomy and to help attorneys understand the medico-legal issues involved in personal injury claims.  Professor Hodge achieves these purposes in his book, but the scope of the book is limited to the most commonly injured areas of the body and the most common personal injury claims.  Anyone involved in more complex personal injury litigation or medical malpractice cases would be better served by referring to more authoritative anatomy texts or educational medical texts in the specialty area in which an injury claim resides.

The beginning and ending chapters of the book are the most useful to all practitioners, as they provide the most litigation tips for pursuing and defending injury claims.  The book begins with a solid overview of human anatomy, summarizing all of the systems of the human body and providing interesting historical anecdotes.  There are hundreds of illustrations in this book, most which are very simple and drawn in pen and ink, that are useful to learn the parts of the body, but that would not be particularly impressive standing alone in front of a jury.

Professor Hodge provides a very simple, plain written lesson on how to request, organize and interpret medical records.  He aptly recognizes the irony between the difficulties inherent in obtaining and interpreting medical records and the regulations that mandate that medical records be created and maintained whenever a patient receives treatment.  He discusses the non-uniformity of medical provider record keeping, abbreviations, handwritten comments and diagnostic codes, and provides tips for how to organize and interpret the records.  Professor Hodge also provides tips on how to decipher ICD codes and health insurance billing statements to determine what treatments a patient actually received.  He further analyzes the different motivations and reasons that plaintiff and defense counsel need medical records and what each counsel should seek within the shadows of the records they receive.  Finally, Professor Hodge discusses the different preexisting conditions that can be discovered with a careful analysis of pharmacy and medical records – – or, an analysis of how defense attorneys can defeat or discount a plaintiff’s claim.

Professor Hodge provides a very useful primer on the different types of diagnostic imaging and their limitations, and his defense bias radiates throughout this discussion.  Professor Hodge actually seems to advocate for less diagnostic testing of patients who present for medical treatment after a traumatic injury because Athe taking of an x-ray only encourages the patient’s belief that he or she is not well. He opines that abnormal findings on films are not usually clinically significant and provides several limited population studies to support this assertion.  He further discusses what x-rays can tell the defense and provides a survey of different legal challenges to the tests and their result validity.  Despite the glaring defense bias, this primer on diagnostic imaging does provide an overview of almost every different type of diagnostic test, their purposes and uses, and when they are indicated.  This primer is a useful reference to any attorney who seeks a concise explanation of the different nuclear scans and tests available and their limitations.

The remainder of the book is a solid anatomy primer, but its primary focus is on fractures, sprains and strains more than it is on serious medical conditions.  The author acknowledges that the focus of the book is on the most common workplace injuries and personal injuries from falls and motor vehicle accidents.  The anatomy lessons provided are on the bones, the back, the chest, the shoulder, the hand, the hip, the knee, the ankle, the foot, and the tooth — a chapter that seemed very out-of-place and written solely because it is an academic legal interest of the author or a focus of his practice for claims he defends.  Each chapter explains how to use a claimant=s risk factors or preexisting medical conditions to defeat causation or discount the severity of the injury claimed.  In addition to the defense tips provided, there are numerous non-authoritative references and websites for further information, case examples, and a brief analysis of jury verdicts and settlements for each type of injury to the body part being discussed.