Where a trial judge makes significant adverse credit findings against a plaintiff — particularly findings of deliberate dishonesty to secure financial advantage — those findings cannot be quarantined from the assessment of the plaintiff's evidence on central liability issues. The trial judge must explain why documents relied upon to support the plaintiff's case are not tainted by the adverse credit findings. A trial judge who finds a plaintiff has lied on many occasions over a period spanning the incident to secure financial advantage acts inconsistently in then accepting the plaintiff's 'early' accounts of the incident as 'credible' without addressing why those accounts should be treated differently. Additionally, a trial judge must not substitute his or her own medical opinion for expert evidence, including by deploying an expert's evidence about a medical concept (such as the adrenaline effect) in a manner the expert expressly eschewed.
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