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Insurance company usually uses Functional Capacity Evaluation to weigh your lack of earning capacity, and what you can actually do physically after your injury. What you are capable of when you reach Maximum Medical Improvement (MMI).

Unfortunately, what happens most of the times, is that the insurance company uses Functional Capacity Exams to see if you are lacking effort. Or maybe you exaggerate your symptoms and injuries. Then they can try to use that against you later in court saying to the judge you’re exaggerating or lying. Or just refusing to give the amount of effort that’s they’re asking you to do.

Do Your Best

This is tough because a lot of people don’t want to exert that type of effort. Not because they want to hide anything. But, because they have injuries that they don’t want you to re-aggravate. When they tell you to bend down and touch your toes ten times while you have a back injury, that’s just healing, it might be a little uncomfortable to do that.

The best thing to do is to explain yourself, number one, and say hey I might be a little afraid to do this certain exercise. And just be very upfront and honest with them.

Because what they’re simply looking for more so than how many pushups you do or how fast you can walk is to see if you’re going to exaggerate. And that’s all what they look for. They’re looking to see if you’re exaggerating or you’re not exerting effort acting like you can’t do something that you probably can do.

Be Brutally Honest

My best advice is to be totally brutally honest and do the exercises that you know that you can do. Because at some point some doctor is going to say that you could’ve done better.

So be upfront and honest. Don’t be afraid of it. However, be on the alert because they’re going to be watching you normally. Not every time. But in the Defense Base Act area of law since these cases are valuable. They’ll be watching you all the way from when you get in your car to when you get out of your car. When you’re smoking a cigarette they’ll be watching that and they’ll be recording that as to a written record of what they observed.

If you’re skipping around the sidewalk and then you can’t bend down and touch your toes, they’re going to hold that against you.

It’s also a very good time for the insurance company to do surveillance on you. Because they know where you’re going to be. They know where you are and they may do it beforehand or they may do it afterwards. They may actually follow you throughout the day to see if what you exerted in your Functional Capacity Exam, comports with what you’re doing during that day.

If you do the exam and you can’t do certain things, but then you go home and cut your lawn with a manual lawnmower, someone might be watching that. He might try to hold that against you in the future.

That’s just a tidbit in this area of law. These types of things are easily argued on our side in terms of abilities and each person’s individual capacities to do jobs and especially overseas in a combat setting.

Don’t be afraid of it. And just be honest with everyone upfront. If you don’t feel comfortable and exert your best efforts it works better in the long run.

You’re Injured or Not

If you’re injured you’re injured and if you’re not you’re not. So that’s just a little tidbit of advice.

You may have questions about Functional Capacity Evaluations or any other thing that has to do with your Defense Base Act claim. You can call us any time for free and get the answers.

We’ll be glad to answer any of your questions and we’ll be able to help you in any way that we can.

That’s what we like to do here.

Thanks for listening, Brian Wiklendt again signing off from our Maitland Florida office.