Attorney Checklist for Eye Injury Cases

Immediate Steps

• Confirm the client is under active ophthalmic care. Case handling never substitutes for treatment, and untreated complications can change both the medicine and the damages picture.
• Send preservation letters to every treating facility covering the full chart and all diagnostic imaging in native digital format — OCT (optical coherence tomography), visual fields, photographs — before routine retention policies purge them.
• Identify every provider who has ever examined the client's eyes, including optometrists, and begin records requests early; some archives take months to produce.
• Calendar expert disclosure deadlines and work backward: review, records-gap requests, and report drafting all need room. See How to Retain an Ophthalmology Expert.
• Run the expert conflict check early, before substantive discussions, so a conflict does not surface after strategy has been shared.

Records to Gather

• Complete ophthalmology charts — every visit, not summaries.
• Complete optometry records, including refraction histories.
• Operative reports, anesthesia records, and implant documentation for any eye surgery.
• Biometry printouts for cataract or lens cases.
• All imaging in native format: OCT, visual fields, fundus photographs, angiography.
• Emergency department records from the incident, including triage acuity and orbital imaging.
• Primary care records bearing on diabetes, hypertension, and medications with ocular effects.
• Pharmacy dispensing records.

The full rationale for each item appears in What Records to Provide.

Baseline Vision Documentation

• Locate the most recent pre-incident eye examination — the single most important causation document in the file.
• Collect older glasses prescriptions, DMV vision screening results, occupational or military vision tests, and school or sports physicals recording acuity.
• Note whether pre-incident records show best-corrected or uncorrected acuity; the distinction is explained in Understanding Visual Acuity.
• Document pre-existing eye conditions honestly — cataract, glaucoma, macular disease, prior surgery. They complicate causation less when addressed head-on than when discovered by opposing counsel.

Key Questions for the Expert

• Is the claimed vision loss corroborated by objective testing — imaging, pupillary findings, structure-function correlation?
• What was the baseline, and what portion of current impairment is attributable to the incident versus pre-existing or age-related conditions?
• Does the timeline of structural findings on serial imaging fit the alleged mechanism and date of injury?
• Is the condition permanent and stable, or still evolving — and what future treatment is reasonably anticipated?
• What records are missing, and would any of them change the analysis?
• Where standard of care is at issue: what would a reasonable ophthalmologist have done, and — separately — did the alleged departure actually cause the outcome? Causation and breach are distinct inquiries; see standard of care and causation.

Timeline Considerations

• Ophthalmic injuries evolve: retinal detachments can occur weeks after trauma, traumatic cataracts develop over months, and glaucoma from angle injury can emerge years later. Premature settlement can miss late complications; premature impairment rating can overstate or understate a still-changing condition.
• In workers' compensation, permanent impairment is rated only once the condition is permanent and stationary; see permanent and stationary evaluations.
• Serial testing over time is evidence in itself — stability, progression, or inconsistency across dated studies often decides the causation question.

Red Flags That Need Specialist Interpretation

• Acuity that varies dramatically between visits without an anatomic explanation.
• Profound claimed loss in one eye with no documented relative afferent pupillary defect.
• Visual field printouts with high false-positive or fixation-loss rates being treated as reliable.
• Normal OCT and retinal findings beneath a claim of severe central vision loss.
• Records where the only acuity measurements are uncorrected, or where pinhole results were never recorded.
• A "20/200" entry being equated with legal blindness without checking correction status or the better eye.
• Vision complaints that appear in the record for the first time long after the incident.

None of these is conclusive by itself — each has innocent explanations that a specialist can evaluate. What they share is that a non-specialist reading of the chart will miss their significance in either direction.

Putting the Checklist to Work

A preliminary expert review — often brief — can triage which checklist items matter most in a given case and whether the objective record supports the claim. Dr. Shomer reviews eye injury matters nationwide for both plaintiff and defense counsel; see ocular trauma expert services for the range of injury types evaluated.

Frequently Asked Questions