Book Review

• Publication year: 2024
• Citation: Vol. 37 No. 2 Pg. 46
• Pages: 46

Book ReviewVol. 37 No. 2 Pg. 46Utah Bar JournalMarch 2024

Psych 101 for Attorneys

A Manual for Litigating Psychiatric Injury Claims

by Michael A. D'Anton, Ph.D., J.D.

Reviewed by Alan Mortensen

While on a recent cross-country airplane trip from Salt Lake City to Miami, I opened a book I had been given, and the question immediately jumped from the page: "Do you know the difference between PTSD and the sequelae of a Traumatic Brain Injury when they present with the same symptomology?" I was intrigued, as that is a question I deal with regularly and I remain unsure if I fully know the answer. So given the few minutes of free time at 30,000 feet, I began reading Michael A. D'Anton, Ph.D., J.D.'s Psych 101for Attorneys, A Manual for Litigating Injury Claims (2022).

Dr. D'Anton is both a licensed psychologist and a litigator in New Jersey. He brings an expertise in both psychology and the law to provide the practitioner a road map from psychiatric-injury case sign-up to verdict. His overriding theme of the book is that a practitioner needs to "check your ego at the door" and really dive into understanding how a psychiatric injury case differs from other personal injury cases. The failure to do so can result in a plaintiff attorney losing her payday or defense counsel being "quickly...