Anesthesiology Expert’s Opinions on Life Expectancy Admitted
Posted on December 3, 2025 by Expert Witness Profiler
This case arises from a motor vehicle collision between Plaintiff Marie Shante Box and Defendant William Causey in May 2023. Following the collision, Box filed suit against Causey, CTS National Corporation (Causey’s employer), and Old Republic Insurance Company (CTS’s insurer). She sought compensatory damages for her injuries, punitive damages, and attorney’s fees. To support her compensatory damages claims, Box retained Dr. Thomas Pontinen as an expert witness. Pontinen’s expert report opined that Box’s future medical and life care will cost $822,2218.55.
The Defendants sought to exclude Pontinen’s opinions on the grounds that he is not qualified and that his methodology is not reliable.
Anesthesiology Expert Witness
Dr. Thomas Pontinen is a double-board certified anesthesiologist and interventional pain medicine specialist and is certified as a Life Care Planner.
He regularly provides life care planning services through a company called LCP Pro, LLC. Pontinen has published multiple journal articles, written textbook chapters, and has presented at international conferences in the fields of surgery, anesthesiology, and pain medicine.
Discussion by the Court
1. Qualifications
The Defendants sought to exclude Pontinen’s opinions because his life care plan included an estimate of Box’s life expectancy, which they argued Pontinen was not qualified to calculate.
The Court held that Pontinen is qualified to opine on Box’s life expectancy, as one component of Box’s life care plan. As part of the life care planning calculations, Pontinen estimated that Box would live an additional forty years.
His life expectancy estimate was based on the Center for Disease Control’s (“CDC”) 2023 National Vital Statistics Report on life expectancy for the U.S. population.
Pontinen is a certified life care planner who provides services through a life care planning company, which regularly provides life expectancy estimates as part of its process. Other courts have found certified life care planners qualified to rely on their life expectancy calculations as part of creating a life care plan.
And the Defendants did not point to—and the Court is not aware of—case law that requires an expert witness to be a life expectancy expert or economist in order to rely on a life expectancy estimate.
2. Reliability
The Defendants argued that Pontinen (1) did not collaborate with Box’s primary treating physician and (2) his pricing model relied on proprietary data.
The Court held that Pontinen’s methodology is reliable for Daubert purposes. There is no one required methodology in the life care planning industry. Pontinen explains that his methodology (and LCP Pro’s) is based on “peer-reviewed, published methodologies and Standards of Practice within the life care planning associations,” including the American Academy of Physician Life Care Planners, International Academy of Life Care Planners, and American Association of Nurse Life Care Planners.
Regarding the relationship between Pontinen and Box’s primary treating physician, the Court found that the lack of formal collaboration between the two is not sufficient to render Pontinen’s methodology unreliable.
While the record in this case indicated that collaboration with physicians is recommended within the life care planning industry, the record did not support the notion that a life care planner’s failure to collaborate renders his or her methodology unreliable
Even if the Defendants could identify some document that expressly requires collaboration with every treating physician, that would still be insufficient.
The Court is not persuaded that LCP Pro’s database is unreliable or unverifiable within the industry nor that Pontinen’s use of a proprietary database renders his methodology unreliable for Daubert purposes. Pontinen relied on Box’s actual bills or provider estimates where possible and costing databases, such as those by the Practice Management Information Corporation and LCP Pro, where not. He provided nineteen cost estimates based on individual future needs. Three of those estimates were derived from LCP Pro’s database. LCP Pro’s database contains data from “more than 2,000 cases” and is “based on actual provider charges and actual provider estimates for injections and surgeries.”
Held
The Court denied the Defendants’ motion to exclude the testimony of Thomas Pontinen.
Key Takeaway:
Pontinen’s methodology for employing pricing databases, including LCP Pro’s proprietary database, is consistent with standards in the life care planning industry and Daubert.
Any further disagreement regarding the accuracy of Pontinen’s individual cost estimates speaks to the weight of the testimony rather than its admissibility, as competing expert witnesses often supply different cost estimates from one another.
Case Details:
| Case Caption: | Box V. Causey |
| Docket Number: | 1:24cv3766 |
| Court Name: | United States District Court, Georgia Northern |
| Order Date: | December 02, 2025 |
